Departure
96%
vs 95% ▲ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg (LFSB) is a binational international airport in Saint-Louis, eastern France, jointly administered by France and Switzerland and serving the tri-national conurbation of Basel, Mulhouse and Freiburg. For a visiting VFR or IFR pilot it offers a long ILS-equipped main runway and a busy mix of scheduled, low-cost and business traffic in airspace shared between two states.
EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg, known by the ICAO code LFSB and commercially branded simply as EuroAirport, is a large international airport in the commune of Saint-Louis in the French Alsace region. It is unusual in being the world's only binational airport, built entirely on French soil but administered jointly by France and the Swiss canton of Basel-Stadt under a 1949 international convention. The field is a base for easyJet Switzerland and handles scheduled and leisure traffic across Europe, making it of interest to simulator pilots for its cross-border character, long runway and full instrument approach facilities.
The airport lies close to the tripoint where France, Germany and Switzerland meet, some 4.7 km west of that point, 3.5 km northwest of the city of Basel in Switzerland, about 20 km northwest of Mulhouse in France, and roughly 46 km south-southwest of Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany. It sits within the administrative area covering Saint-Louis, Hésingue and Blotzheim.
The airport has two physical runways. The main runway, 15/33, is a hard-surfaced, lit runway equipped with ILS on both directions; the declared length is 12801 ft when used as runway 15 and 9125 ft when used as runway 33. The secondary runway, 07/25, is also hard-surfaced and lit, with a declared length of 5610 ft as runway 07 and 5242 ft as runway 25. Field elevation is 876 ft.
Air traffic services are provided on Tower 118.3 MHz, with Approach and ATIS broadcast on 127.875 MHz, Ground on 121.6 MHz, Information on 121.25 MHz, and a Preflight (PFLT) frequency on 120.5 MHz. An aerodrome frequency (A/D) is also listed on 118.575 MHz. The main runway, 15/33, is equipped with ILS.
Plans for a joint Swiss-French airport date back to the 1930s but were interrupted by the Second World War. In 1946 France and the Swiss canton of Basel-Stadt agreed to build an airport north of Blotzheim, with France providing the land and Basel-Stadt funding construction; work began on 8 March 1946 and a provisional airport with a 1,200 m runway opened on 8 May 1946. Between 1951 and 1953 the east-west runway was extended to 1,600 m and a customs-free road was built linking Basel to the terminal without French border control. Following a 1960 referendum in Basel, the terminals and runways were progressively enlarged, and the north-south runway was extended to 3,900 m by 1972. Passenger numbers passed one million in 1984 and two million in 1992. In 1987 the trademark name EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg was adopted. In December 1998 Swissair began an Airbus A310 service to Newark, code-shared with its subsidiary Crossair, but the route was withdrawn in March 2000 owing to low occupancy. Crossair, once the largest carrier at Basel, was absorbed into Swiss International Air Lines after the 2001 Swissair collapse, and traffic initially fell before easyJet opened a base in 2004, helping passenger numbers reach four million by 2006. Ryanair served the airport from 2007 to 2009 before withdrawing over a landing-fee dispute, later returning in 2014.
EuroAirport today serves as an operating base for easyJet Switzerland and continues to handle a range of scheduled and leisure flights across Europe. Swiss International Air Lines and Swiss Global Air Lines also maintain their headquarters on the airport's Swiss-administered side, though this side is only accessible from Switzerland. The airport remains under joint Franco-Swiss administration, reflecting its unique binational status.
