On 16 November 1909, the worlds first airline was founded in Frankfurt am Main: The Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft (DELAG). DELAG then built the first airport in Frankfurt, called Airship Base at Rebstock, which was located in Bockenheim in the western part of the city and was primarily used for airships in the beginning. It opened in 1912 With the foundation of Deutsche Luft Hansa in 1926 a rapid boom of civilian air travel started and soon the airship base became too small to handle the demand. Plans for a new and larger airport located in the Frankfurt City Forest south-west of Schwanheim were approved in 1930, but were not realized due to the Great Depression. After the Machtergreifung in 1933 the government revived the plans and started the construction of the new airport. The Frankfurt Rhein-Main Airport and Airship Base was officially opened on 8 July 1936. In the following years it became the second-largest airport in Germany (after Berlin Tempelhof Airport) and was home for the two largest German Zeppelins, LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin and LZ 129 Hindenburg. It was planned to make Frankfurt the most important destination for Zeppelins in Germany, but after the catastrophic crash of the Hindenburg in Lakehurst on 6 May 1937, the airship era came to an abrupt end. In 1951 restrictions for German air travellers were lifted and civil air traffic started to grow again. In 1952 Frankfurt Airport handled more than 400.000 passengers; a year later it was more than half a million. About 100 to 120 planes took off from and landed in Frankfurt daily. In 1955, Lufthansa finally recommenced their flights to and from Frankfurt and in the same year the Federal Republic of Germany gained its air sovereignty back from the Allies. In 1957 the northern runway was extended, first to 3,000 meters and then to 3,900 meters, to make it compatible with jet aircraft. The airport did not emerge as a major international airline hub until 1958 when a new passenger terminal called Empfangsanlage Ost (Terminal East, literally Arrival Facility East) opened in the north-east corner of the airport ground. Only four years later it was clear that the terminal was already too small for the demand. In 1961 Frankfurt already had 2.2 million passengers and 81,000 take-offs and landings, making it the second busiest airport in Europe behind London Heathrow Airport. In 1962 it was decided to build an even larger terminal with a capacity of 30 million passengers per year. Work on this terminal began in 1965. The southern runway was extended to 3,750 meters in 1964. The new terminal, called Terminal Mitte(Central Terminal, today known as Terminal 1) and divided into three concourses (A, B and C) with 56 gates and an electric baggage handling system, was opened to the public on 14 March 1972. It was assumed that the terminal capacity would be sufficient for the next 30 years. In 1990, work on a new terminal (Terminal 2) began because it was anticipated that Terminal Mitte would reach its capacity limit sooner than expected. The new terminal, divided into concourses D and E, was built to the east of the existing terminal where once the Empfangsanlage Ost had been. With its opening in 1994, Frankfurt Airport increased its terminal capacity to 54 million passengers per year. To handle the predicted passenger amount of about 90 million in 2020, a new terminal section adjacent to Terminal 1 for an additional six million passengers opened on 10 October 2012. It is called Flugsteig A-Plus and exclusively used by Lufthansa mainly for their long-haul flights. Flugsteig A-Plus features eight parking positions and is able to handle four Airbus A380or seven Boeing 747 at once.
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 11:10:09 +0000
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