Departure
94%
vs 95% ▼ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Dortmund Airport (ICAO EDLW, IATA DTM) lies on the eastern edge of the Ruhr district at Dortmund-Wickede, about 10 km east of the city centre. Once the base for the merger that created Eurowings, it is today a modest international airport handling mainly low-cost and leisure charter traffic on a single instrument runway. For a VFR pilot it offers a single hard-surface runway equipped with ILS, full tower and approach services under Langen control, and a compact general aviation terminal alongside the main passenger building.
Dortmund Airport sits on the eastern fringe of the Ruhr district in Dortmund-Wickede, North Rhine-Westphalia. Founded as Flughafen Dortmund GmbH in 1926, it grew into one of Germany's earliest hubs for domestic air travel before the Second World War, and after a long dormancy returned to civil use in 1960 on its present site. It is now described as a minor international airport, primarily serving low-cost and leisure charter operations, and it was the birthplace of the airline Eurowings, formed here in 1990 through the merger of Reise- und Industrieflug and Nürnberger Flugdienst. For a visiting simulator pilot it is a straightforward single-runway field with modern ILS approaches and a general aviation terminal separate from the main passenger building.
The airport lies on the eastern edge of the Ruhr district at Dortmund-Wickede, roughly 10 km east of central Dortmund, within the largest urban agglomeration in Germany. Approach and area control in the vicinity are provided by Langen, with Langen Radar handling approach control and Langen Information providing AFIS-type traffic information on a separate frequency.
Dortmund has a single physical runway, 06/24, of hard surface construction and lit for night operations. The runway measures approximately 5574 ft in the 06 direction and 5569 ft in the 24 direction, and both ends are served by an ILS approach, making it well suited to instrument arrivals in poor weather as well as visual operations.
Pilots should expect to work Dortmund Ground (Rollkontrolle) on 121.83 MHz and Dortmund Tower (Turm) on 134.18 MHz for movements on and around the airfield. The Dortmund ATIS broadcasts on 125.13 MHz for arrival and departure information. Approach control is provided by Langen Radar on 125.225 MHz, while Langen Information, an AFIS-type service, operates on 129.875 MHz. The field's runway 06/24 is equipped with ILS at both ends, supporting instrument approaches in addition to visual operations.
Flughafen Dortmund GmbH was founded on 16 April 1926 in the Dortmund-Brackel district, and the airport quickly rose to prominence alongside Cologne as one of the leading centres of domestic German air travel, at one point handling more scheduled flights than Düsseldorf and Essen; by the 1927/1928 business year it was managing 2,589 commercial flights annually. The Second World War brought civil aviation at Dortmund to a halt, and during the conflict the airfield was used as a German air base before passing into use by the British Royal Air Force. Civil flying did not resume when German commercial aviation restarted in 1955, and it was not until 1960 that scheduled services returned, this time to the present site at Dortmund-Wickede. In 1974 a 650-metre tarmac runway replaced the original grass airstrip, and the field was progressively lengthened and developed thereafter, with airport buildings and hangars added over the following decades. Reise- und Industrieflug and Nürnberger Flugdienst merged in 1990 to form Eurowings, an airline that remains based at Dortmund. Construction of a new, multi-level replacement terminal began in 1998 and was completed in 2000, prompting a marked increase in traffic from the turn of the millennium onward, after a 1990s pattern of only a few turboprop domestic flights and occasional charter services to warmer destinations.
Dortmund has grown into the third-largest commercial airport in North Rhine-Westphalia, now handling more than three million passengers a year, and continues to be used chiefly for low-cost scheduled and leisure charter flights. Scheduled landings are permitted between 06:00 and 23:00 local time, with delayed landings possible up to 23:30, while scheduled takeoffs run from 06:00 to 22:00 local time, with delayed departures allowed until 22:30. The terminal used prior to the year 2000 has since been repurposed as the General Aviation Terminal, serving business, leisure and recreational flying alongside the main passenger operation.
