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Weeze Airport, also known as Niederrhein Airport, lies in the Lower Rhine region of North Rhine-Westphalia on the site of the former RAF Laarbruch airbase. Today it is a Ryanair base handling scheduled and seasonal leisure traffic, with a single long hard-surfaced runway equipped with ILS, making it a straightforward destination for a simulated approach in the Lower Rhine area between Nijmegen and the Ruhr.
Weeze Airport sits close to the small town of Weeze in North Rhine-Westphalia and occupies the former RAF Laarbruch military airfield. It has operated as a civilian airport since 2003 and is now a base for Ryanair, giving it a mix of scheduled low-cost traffic and seasonal charter flights. For a simulator pilot it offers a substantial single-runway international field with ILS approach, set in flat, largely agricultural terrain near the Dutch border.
The field lies at an elevation of 98 ft, at coordinates 51.6024N, 6.1422E, roughly 3.7 km southwest of Weeze itself and about 7 km northwest of Kevelaer. It is situated in the Lower Rhine area, some 33 km southeast of Nijmegen in the Netherlands and about 48 km northwest of Duisburg, placing it within reach of several other regional and international airports in the Rhine-Ruhr area.
Weeze has a single physical runway aligned 09/27, of hard surface construction and lit for night operations. The database lists a landing distance of about 7,983 ft on runway 27, which is equipped with an ILS, and about 7,381 ft on runway 09; these differing figures reflect declared distances rather than a difference in the runway's overall physical length.
Weeze provides an ATIS on 124.455 MHz. Tower (Niederrhein Tower/Turm) operates on 129.405 MHz, with Langen Information available on 129.875 MHz and Langen Radar on 128.5 MHz. An operations frequency for Ryanair is published on 131.455 MHz. Runway 27 is served by an ILS approach.
The airport occupies the former RAF Laarbruch airbase and began civilian operations in May 2003. Its early years saw rapid growth, driven in part by the short-lived Dutch low-cost carrier V Bird, which briefly based itself at the field before its 2004 bankruptcy; passenger numbers doubled from 200,000 to 400,000 in that first year. Between 2008 and 2013 it was one of Germany's fastest-growing airports, peaking at nearly three million passengers in 2010. A 2016 court ruling blocked the airport from marketing itself under the Dusseldorf name, on the grounds that the 83 km distance to that city would mislead passengers, though Ryanair has continued to market it as Dusseldorf-Weeze. The airport subsequently experienced a steady decline through the 2010s, worsened by the loss of several Ryanair routes and by the COVID-19 pandemic, before a resurgence in recent years saw passenger numbers exceed two million in 2025 for the first time in over a decade.
Weeze functions as a base for Ryanair, with Sky Express operating seasonal charter flights and Transavia due to introduce seasonal services from early 2027. The airport has a single passenger terminal with an apron to its west offering nine stands for mid-sized aircraft such as the Boeing 737-800; as the apron lies to the side rather than in front of the terminal, most stands are served by bus-boarding rather than direct walking access.
