Memmingen Airport

Memmingen Airport Flughafen Memmingen
IATA: FMM – ICAO: EDJA FMM Location of the airport in Bavaria
Summary
Airport type	Public
Serves	Memmingen and the Allgäu, Germany
Elevation AMSL	633 m / 2,077 ft
Coordinates
Website	allgaeu-airport.de
Runways
Direction Length Surface m ft 06/24 2,981 9,777 asphalt

Memmingen Airport (IATA: FMM, ICAO: EDJA), also known as Allgäu-Airport Memmingen, is an international airport in the town of Memmingerberg near Memmingen, in the Swabia region of Germany. It is the smallest of the three commercial airports in Bavaria after Munich Airport and Nuremberg Airport and has the highest altitude of any commercial airport in Germany. It is operated by Allgäu Airport GmbH & Co. KG, a limited partnership of 71 mostly local, medium-sized companies with only minor public shares.

Located about 3.8 km (2.4 mi) from the centre of Memmingen and 110 km (68 mi) from the city centre of Munich, it serves Memmingen and the Allgäu area and also provides a low-cost alternative to Munich Airport and therefore is sometimes referred to as Memmingen/Munich-West Airport or similar by some low-cost airlines. It mostly features flights to European leisure and some metropolitan destinations.

History

A military airfield was built at Memmingerberg in 1935. It was used during World War II. After being rebuilt, it was used for US Air Force training flights from 1956. From 1959 to 2003, it was the home base of German Air Force fighterbomber wing 34 ("Allgäu").

The airport was certified as a regional commercial airport on 20 July 2004 and commenced operation on 5 August 2004, but there were no scheduled or regular chartered flights. Scheduled flights to the 2005 Hanover Fair were cancelled due to lack of demand. In June 2005, the district of Oberallgäu granted initial finance of €480,000. A further sum of €200,000 was granted by the city of Memmingen after a popular vote on 25 September 2005. In 2006, scheduled flights to Dortmund and Rostock were planned but cancelled because the carrier became insolvent. In autumn 2006, Luftfahrtgesellschaft Walter offered chartered flights to Dortmund for two months, during which only 100 passengers were carried.

In March 2007, a subsidy of €7,500,000 promised by Bavaria was approved by the European Commission. Until 25 September 2008 it was known as Allgäu Airport/Memmingen.

On 28 June 2007, TUIfly started offering domestic flights to Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne/Bonn and also flights to holiday destinations such as Mallorca, Crete, Naples, Rome, Venice and Antalya. In March 2009, Ryanair announced seven new routes to/from Memmingen starting May 2009. They have continued to announce new routes and from May 2010 Ryanair operated 14 routes to and from Memmingen. Wizz Air also started to serve Memmingen and established up to six routes since then. On 24 October 2013, Ryanair announced a new seasonal service to Shannon while Palermo was added as a destination from the summer season of 2015.

On 5 June 2014, the airport welcomed its fifth millionth passenger in total.

In December 2014, InterSky announced to take over the domestic flights from Memmingen to Berlin and Hamburg by 1 March 2015 as Germanwings announced to cease the same services just a few days earlier. In earlier years, these routes had already been unsuccessfully served by TUIfly, Air Berlin and Avanti Air.

In April 2015, Wizz Air announced to serve Vilnius as their eighth destination from Memmingen.

In May 2015, InterSky announced to open a base at Memmingen Airport by October 2015 consisting of one aircraft, adding a new route to Cologne and increasing frequencies on the already existing services to Berlin and Hamburg. Later, that plan was changed as a triangled route Friedrichshafen - Memmingen - Cologne/Bonn will be established instead of basing an aircraft in Memmingen. However, on 6 November 2015, InterSky ceased all operations due to financial difficulties, leaving Memmingen again without any domestic connections.

Infrastructure

Aerial view of Memmingen Airport

Check-in area inside the main hall

Terminal

Memmingen Airport features one passenger terminal building equipped with 10 check-in counters and 7 departure gates used for Schengen flights (1-3) on the ground floor and non-Schengen flights (4-7) on the upper floor. The building features no jet bridges, therefore walk-boarding and bus-boarding is used. There are also a duty-free shop as well as some restaurants and rental car facilities at the airport. The terminal provides capacity for up to two million passengers per year.

Runway and apron

Memmingen Airport has an Instrument Landing System (ILS) Category 1 for runway 24, NDB/DME and GPS RNAV. Although the length of the runway of about 3 km would allow larger planes, the airport's certificate only allows planes with wingspans up to 36 m due to the narrow taxiways originally designed for Lockheed F-104G Starfighters and Panavia Tornados.

Two aprons provide parking spaces for five mid-sized jets such as the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 at a time as well as some smaller business-jets and general aviation planes.

Airlines and destinations

The following airlines operate regular scheduled and charter flights at Memmingen Airport:

Airlines	Destinations
Austrian Airlines	Seasonal charter: Naples (begins 3 April 2016)
Niki	Seasonal charter: Calvi
Ryanair	Alicante, Dublin, Faro, London-Stansted, Málaga, Palermo, Porto, Rome-Ciampino, Tenerife-South Seasonal: Alghero, Chania, Girona, Palma de Mallorca, Shannon, Trapani
SunExpress	Seasonal: Antalya
Wizz Air	Belgrade, Cluj-Napoca (begins 28 March 2016), Kiev-Zhulyany, Skopje, Sofia, Târgu Mureș, Timișoara, Tuzla, Vilnius

Statistics

Ryanair Boeing 737-800 at Memmingen Airport with the Bavarian Alps visible in the background

	Passengers
2008	462,000
2009	810,000
2010	911,609
2011	764,782
2012	869,937
2013	838,971
2014	750,000
2015	883,490

Ground transportation

Car

The airport is located close to motorway A96 (Exit Memmingen Ost) and its intersection with motorway A7. The A96 leads directly to Munich, Lake Constance and Switzerland while the A7 leads to Stuttgart and Austria. Taxis as well as counters of several car rental agencies are available at the terminal building.

Coach

There are coach services from Memmingen Airport directly to Munich (journey time approx. 90 minutes), Ulm, Zürich, St. Gallen and the Kleinwalsertal mountain and ski resort.

Bus

Local bus lines 2 and 810/811 connect the airport within a 15-minute drive with Memmingen city center including Memmingen station, from where frequent regional rail services of Deutsche Bahn to Munich (journey time approx. 1:35) and Augsburg as well as some long-distance services of Swiss Federal Railways towards Bregenz and Zürich can be reached.

See also

• Transport in Germany
• List of airports in Germany

External links

Media related to at Wikimedia Commons

• Official website
• Current weather for EDJA at NOAA/NWS
• Accident history for FMM at Aviation Safety Network