Departure
88%
vs 95% ▼ 7
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Leeuwarden Air Base is a Royal Netherlands Air and Space Force airfield in Friesland, lying northwest of the city of Leeuwarden, and is one of the busiest military aerodromes in the Netherlands. It hosts F-35A Lightning II fighters, MQ-9A Reaper unmanned aircraft and the annual Frisian Flag exercise, making it a distinctive and active destination for anyone studying Dutch military airspace in a flight simulator.
Leeuwarden Air Base (Vliegbasis Leeuwarden) is an active military airfield operated by the Royal Netherlands Air and Space Force (Koninklijke Luchtmacht), sited in the province of Friesland to the northwest of the city of Leeuwarden. It is a front-line fast-jet and unmanned-aircraft base rather than a civil field, home to F-35A Lightning II fighters and MQ-9A Reaper drones, and it is well known among enthusiasts for the multinational Frisian Flag exercise and for the periodic Luchtmachtdagen air shows it has hosted. For a simulator pilot it offers a good study in military ATC procedure, a long ILS-equipped runway pair, and a strong sense of Dutch air power history layered over a field that began life as a civil airport.
The base lies in Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands, to the northwest of the provincial capital Leeuwarden. As an active military airbase it sits within controlled Dutch military airspace and falls under Dutch Military Center control, with Leeuwarden Arrival and Leeuwarden Tower providing local air traffic services.
Leeuwarden has two paired hard-surfaced runways, both lit and equipped with ILS. The main runway, 05/23, is 8,846 ft in one direction and 8,643 ft in the other, giving ample length for fast-jet operations. The secondary runway, 09/27, measures 6,360 ft on 09 and 6,551 ft on 27. Field elevation is 3 ft.
Air traffic services are provided on Leeuwarden Tower, 120.705 MHz. Approach and arrival services are handled on 132.03 MHz, identified as RAPCON North Approach and as Leeuwarden Arrival. Overall military area control is provided by Dutch Military Center on 128.355 MHz. Both runway pairs are served by ILS.
The base lies to the northwest of the city of Leeuwarden itself, which serves as the principal visual landmark for locating the field from the surrounding Friesland countryside.
The airfield at Leeuwarden was built in 1938 as a civil airport, initially serving as a stop on the route between Schiphol and Eelde, though it saw only light use before the Second World War. Following the German invasion of the Low Countries in 1940, the Luftwaffe seized the field and used it as a base for fighter aircraft, including the Messerschmitt Bf 109, and for bombers, from which the Germans could reach Great Britain. The airfield was heavily bombed by the Royal Air Force, notably on 16 and 17 September 1944. After liberation the base was repaired and briefly returned to civil use, with KLM operating a commercial service to Schiphol, before Leeuwarden was designated a dedicated military airbase in 1949. During the 1970s it temporarily hosted the United States Air Force's 32nd Tactical Fighter Squadron, normally based at Soesterberg, while runway repairs were carried out there. For decades Leeuwarden was one of the Royal Netherlands Air Force's two F-16 Fighting Falcon bases, home to the swing-role 322 Squadron and the Tactical Training Evaluation and Standardisation 323 Squadron, the latter standing down as an F-16 unit on 31 October 2014. The base also hosted 303 Squadron, a Search and Rescue unit flying Agusta Bell AB 412SP helicopters, which stood down on 1 January 2015. The base has repeatedly hosted the Royal Netherlands Air Force's Luchtmachtdagen public air show days, including in 2006, 2008, 2011 and 2016.
Leeuwarden Air Base remains an active front-line installation of the Royal Netherlands Air and Space Force. It is now a Dutch F-35 base, with the first F-35A Lightning II arriving on 31 October 2019 and the type having since replaced all F-16s; 322 Squadron operates the F-35A, while 323 Squadron has been reconstituted as the Air Combat Development Centre. From the beginning of 2022 the base also became home to the MQ-9A Reaper unmanned aircraft, operated by 306 Squadron, supported by 920 Squadron (Maintenance), 921 Squadron (Logistics) and 922 Squadron (Base Operations). The base is the location of Fighter Weapons Instructor Training and hosts the annual multinational NATO exercise Frisian Flag, during which training sorties are flown over the North Sea and the Vliehors range on Vlieland, along with detachments from allied air arms.
