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Leipzig/Halle Airport (EDDP) lies at Schkeuditz between the cities of Leipzig and Halle, and is one of Europe's principal cargo hubs, serving as the main European base for DHL Aviation and AeroLogic. Its two enormous parallel runways, both fitted with ILS, reflect a field built for heavy freighter operations around the clock, making it a distinctive and busy destination for the simulator pilot flying into central Germany.
Leipzig/Halle Airport, ICAO code EDDP, sits at Schkeuditz in Saxony, roughly midway between Leipzig and Halle. It is a large, state-owned international airport that combines a modest passenger operation with an outsized freight business: it is the second-busiest cargo airport in Germany and the fourth-busiest in Europe, serving as the European hub for DHL Aviation and the main base for AeroLogic, with Amazon Air and Antonov Airlines also operating hub services there. For a sim pilot the appeal lies in its scale and character as a round-the-clock cargo gateway, complete with military installations used by NATO and EU aircraft, set within an otherwise fairly rural stretch of central Germany.
The airport is located at coordinates 51.424 north, 12.2364 east, at an elevation of 440 feet, in the town of Schkeuditz, administratively part of Landkreis Nordsachsen though the field itself sits close to the Saxony-Anhalt border and serves both Leipzig and Halle. As a major controlled aerodrome handling heavy cargo and airline traffic, it sits within its own controlled airspace with approach control provided under the callsign Munich Radar.
The airport has two parallel physical runways aligned 08/26. The northern runway, 08L/26R, is 11,789 feet long, has a hard surface, is lit, and is equipped with ILS. The southern runway, 08R/26L, is 11,786 feet long, likewise hard-surfaced, lit, and equipped with ILS. Both runways are of near-identical length and are amongst the longest in Germany, reflecting the field's role as a major freighter base.
Air traffic services are provided under several frequencies: approach as Munich Radar on 124.175 MHz, ATIS on 123.95 MHz, ground on 121.8 MHz, an information service as Munich Info on 125.8 MHz, and tower on 121.1 MHz. Both runways are equipped with ILS, supporting instrument approaches in poor weather.
The airfield was built from scratch between a site south of Halle and north of Leipzig from 1926 and opened in 1927 as Schkeuditz Airfield. In 1928 it was renamed Halle/Leipzig Airport, the name later reordered to its current form. The 1930s saw expansion of the airport buildings, including a restaurant, and a new terminal built in the Nazi architectural style of the period in 1936/37; by the start of the Second World War it was the fourth-busiest commercial airport in the country, with more than 40 takeoffs a day, before being taken over entirely by the Luftwaffe for military use. On 16 April 1944 it was heavily bombed by Allied aircraft and largely destroyed. Rebuilt during the early years of the German Democratic Republic, it initially served only industrial purposes; a new 2,500-metre runway was added between 1957 and 1960 as part of plans to develop commercial traffic, though volumes remained low. From 1963 the airport twice a year hosted the Leipzig Trade Fair, with regular Interflug service, and a more modern terminal followed in 1968; the airport operated year-round for the first time in 1972. On 18 March 1986, Air France flew a Concorde into Leipzig to coincide with the Leipziger Buchmesse book fair, with British Airways following two days later on a single occasion; Leipzig remained the only airport in the Communist Bloc ever served by Concorde, with around ten such flights operated by Air France to coincide with the trade fair. By 1988 annual traffic had reached some 550,000 passengers. Following German reunification, Terminal A was modernised in 1991, passenger numbers passed one million for the first time in 1992, and Terminal B was completed in 1996. A new 3,500-metre runway was built between 1998 and 2003, and a new control tower opened in 2000. DHL Aviation relocated its European hub to Leipzig/Halle in early 2008, transforming the airport's cargo traffic, and the field was further modernised around an unsuccessful bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games. Ryanair briefly operated six routes from 2013, mostly withdrawn within a year, and Etihad Regional ended its short-lived operations in 2015. Plans announced by Pakistan International Airlines in 2016 to route a New York service through Leipzig/Halle using Fifth Freedom rights never came to fruition after the airline withdrew from the United States market in 2017.
Leipzig/Halle Airport today operates as a major freight gateway alongside a smaller passenger business focused on European leisure destinations, having handled more than 2.19 million passengers in 2024. It functions as DHL Aviation's principal European hub and as the main hub for AeroLogic, with Amazon Air and Antonov Airlines also basing hub operations there, and permits 24-hour takeoffs and landings for cargo flights. Military facilities on the airfield are used by NATO and EU aircraft. It is Germany's 12th-largest airport by passenger numbers and the country's second-busiest by cargo tonnage.
