Zeppelins first took to the air from there, and later the A380 took off. But Frankfurt Airport did not always cause enthusiasm. The clashes over the west runway even led to deaths. A review.
Today, when the “plane spotters” in Frankfurt look up at the sky on the small strip on the eastern side between the A5 motorway and the airport fence, they see a different aircraft in front of their lens every few minutes. In October alone there were almost 40,000 takeoffs and landings. Around 5.7 million passengers were transported here and around 180,000 tonnes of freight.
Directly behind the airport fans with their cameras, the Zeppelinheim district of Neu-Isenburg is a reminder of the airport's beginnings. However, the first airfield was not located there, but rather near today's trade fair, in the Rebstock district of Frankfurt, where a large hall had been built early on. Frankfurt was the home port of German airships such as the “Graf Zeppelin” and the “Hindenburg”.
100 years of Frankfurt Airport
Zeppelins, raisin bombers, Eyjafjallajökull
Urban forest becomes a location
On July 2, 1924, Südwestdeutsche Luftverkehrs AG was founded there, the legal predecessor of today's airport operator Fraport AG. At the beginning there were 234 take-offs and landings with 536 passengers and 1.1 tons of mail – mind you: for the entire year. The flights were mainly on the Frankfurt-Munich and Frankfurt-Berlin routes.
But because there was quickly no longer enough space on the Rebstock site, a new location was found in the nearby city forest. At the turn of the year 1933/34 a new building was decided. And finally, on July 8, 1936, air traffic at Rhein-Main Airport was officially opened with the landing of the Lufthansa Ju 52 D-AQUO aircraft.
From the airlift to the large airport
After the end of the Second World War, the Frankfurt-Berlin connection became more important. From mid-1948 onwards, planes took off from Rhein-Main Airport towards Berlin every three minutes. The blockade of the city was broken by air. The West Berlin population was supplied with what they needed using the so-called raisin bombers.
Near the eastern plane spotter meeting point at Frankfurt Airport, a concrete monument with three points still reminds us of this – it is the counterpart to the Berlin “Hungerkralle”, which stands at the old Berlin Tempelhof Airport and creates the symbolic connection to the West .
Runway West – resistance and deadly protest
The economic boom in post-war Germany did not stop at the airport. Lufthansa had made Frankfurt its base. The airport kept getting bigger. But criticism of it also increased. Citizens had concerns about aircraft noise, air pollution and planned deforestation. Citizens' initiatives were formed to sue to prevent the construction of the planned runway 18 West – but were only able to delay it.
Construction of the runway began on November 2, 1980 under heavy police protection. During the evacuation of a hut village by opponents of the expansion, there were massive clashes with the police. A year later, 120,000 people demonstrated against the expansion in Wiesbaden. Nevertheless, the railway was put into operation in April 1984. Three and a half years later, there were still protests. The terrible climax: two police officers were shot on November 2, 1987.
Eyjafjallajökull and Corona
Possibly as a result of these disputes, politicians in the future relied on an open-ended consultation process for further expansion plans, a mediation in which opponents of expansion were also heard. In any case, the airport continued to grow, with a second terminal and a northwest runway.
Since 2011, there has been a ban on night flights between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. at the airport operated by Fraport AG in order to help residents rest at night. For completely different reasons, however, things became quiet at the airport in 2010. When global air traffic came to a standstill due to a volcanic eruption in Iceland, many thousands of travelers were stranded in transit. Eyjafjallajökull ensured that take-offs and landings decreased significantly. This was only topped by the corona pandemic, in which air traffic almost came to a standstill during the lockdown.
That wasn't a good scenario for the “plane spotters” back then. But if you look at the area from the airport fence again today, you will not only see the construction site of the new Terminal 3 to the south, which is due to be completed in 2026, but also take-offs and landings every minute.
