Frankfurt Main Airport

Frankfurt Main Airport
FRAEDDF

Frankfurt Main Airport

Frankfurt am Main, Germany · Europe
Europe Europe/Berlin IVCA 70.0
284direct destinations
89airlines
4runways
4,000 mLongest runway
1936opened

Frankfurt Airport (German: Flughafen Frankfurt Main [?flu?kha?fn? ?f?a?kf??t ?ma?n]) (IATA: FRA, ICAO: EDDF) is Germany's busiest international airport by passenger numbers, located in Frankfurt, Germany's fifth-largest city. Its official name according to the German Aeronautical Information Publication is Frankfurt Main Airport. The airport is operated by Fraport and serves as the main hub for Lufthansa, including Lufthansa City Airlines, Lufthansa CityLine, Discover Airlines and Lufthansa Cargo as well as Condor and AeroLogic. It covers an area of 2,300 hectares (5,683 acres) of land and features three passenger terminals with capacity for approximately 65 million passengers per year; four runways; and extensive logistics and maintenance facilities. Frankfurt Airport is the busiest airport by passenger traffic in Germany as well as the 6th busiest in Europe after London–Heathrow, Istanbul, Paris–Charles de Gaulle, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol and Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport. The airport is also the 22nd busiest worldwide by total number of passengers in 2024, with 61,564,957 passengers using the airport in 2024. It also had a freight throughput of 2.076 million tonnes in 2015 and is the busiest airport in Europe by cargo traffic. As of 2022, Frankfurt Airport serves 330 destinations on five continents, making it the airport with the most direct routes in the world.

Location

Mapa

50.027°N, 8.558°E · 111 m s. n. m. (364 ft)

General data

CountryGermany
CityFrankfurt am Main
Coordinates50.027°N, 8.558°E
Elevation111 m s. n. m. (364 ft)
Time zoneEurope/Berlin
Longest runway4,000 m
OperatorFraport
Opened1936
Direct destinations284
Passengers per year63,200,000 (2025)

Runways · 4

07C/25C
Length4,000 m13,123 ft
Width60 m197 ft
SurfaceAsphalt
Lighted✓
07R/25L
Length4,000 m13,123 ft
Width45 m148 ft
SurfaceConcrete
Lighted✓
18/36
Length4,000 m13,123 ft
Width45 m148 ft
SurfaceConcrete
Lighted✓
07L/25R
Length2,800 m9,186 ft
Width45 m148 ft
SurfaceConcrete
Lighted✓

Lengths and surfaces from the public OurAirports register; open runways only.

Radio frequencies · 15

Tower

119.905FRANKFURT TOWER / TURM (SOUTH)124.855Frankfurt Tower / TURM (RWY 18)136.500FRANKFURT TOWER / TURM (NORTH)

Ground

121.805Frankfurt Ground / Rollkontrolle

Clearance delivery

122.035Frankfurt Delivery (initial call)

ATIS (automatic information)

118.030Frankfurt ATIS (ARR)118.730Frankfurt ATIS (DEP)

Approach

118.450LANGEN RADAR124.200127.275LANGEN RADAR

Flight information

119.150Langen Information123.525Langen Information

Automated weather

127.605Frankfurt 1 VOLMET135.780Frankfurt 2 VOLMET

Apron

121.655Frankfurt Apron / Vorfeld
Look for a live feed on LiveATC External site; not every airport has a feed.

Reference frequencies for enthusiasts, from OurAirports (community database, public domain), checked on Oct 16, 2026. They may be outdated or incomplete and do not replace the AIP or current charts: not for navigation. In Europe the published frequency may be an 8.33 kHz channel (e.g., 118.505 for 118.500). In MHz.

History

Since 2012, the people mover "The Squaire Metro" connects The Squaire with the nine-storey parking structure. On a length of about 300 metres the so-called MiniMetro system with its two cabins can carry up to 1,300 passengers per hour. The constructor of the system was the Italian manufacturer Leitner Ropeways. In 2012, the website Airport Watch reported weekly protests had been occurring at the airport since the opening of a fourth runway a year previously. The new runway officially went into operation on 20 October 2011, with an aircraft carrying Chancellor Angela Merkel, performing the first landing on 21 October. The centre line separation from the existing north runway is about 1,400 m (4,593 ft). This allows simultaneous instrument landing system (ILS) operations on these two runways, which has not been possible on the other parallel runways, which do not meet the 3,500 feet (1,100 m) minimum separation for ILS operations. This allowed the airport to increase its capacity from 83 to 126 aircraft movements per hour. On 11 October 2011, the Hessian Administration Court ruled that night flights between 11pm and 5am (the so-called Mediationsnacht) are no longer allowed at Frankfurt Airport after the inauguration of the new runway, and therefore overrode the approval from the Hessian government from 2007 which allowed 17 scheduled flights per night. On 4 April 2012, the German Administrative Court confirmed the decision of the Hessian Administration Court, banning night flights between 11pm and 5am. To handle the predicted passenger amount of about 90 million in 2020, a new terminal section adjacent to Terminal 1 for an additional six million passengers opened on 10 October 2012. It is called Flugsteig A-Plus and is exclusively used by Lufthansa mainly for their long-haul flights. Flugsteig A-Plus features eight parking positions that are able to handle four Airbus A380s or seven Boeing 747-8/747–400 simultaneously. In November 2016, Ryanair announced the opening of a new base at Frankfurt Airport with four routes to Spain and Portugal. This move by Ryanair was heavily blasted, especially by Lufthansa, as Ryanair was granted high discounts and incentives regarding the airport's fees. Albanian citizen, Arid Uka, a 21 year old at the time, targeted a United States Air Force bus parked outside the terminal building that was supposed to transport fifteen U.S. airmen to Ramstein Air Base. He reportedly walked up to a waiting airman, asked him for a cigarette, and wanted to know whether the airmen were bound for Afghanistan. When the airman said yes, according to German prosecutor Rainer Griesbaum, Uka waited for the airman to turn away and then shot him in the back of the head, killing him. Shouting "Allahu Akbar!" the attacker then entered the bus, shooting and killing the driver, and continued to fire three shots at two other airmen, wounding them. When he pointed his pistol at the head of another airman and pulled the trigger, the weapon jammed. Uka fled, but was pursued by the civilian airport employee Lamar Joseph Conner and Staff Sergeant Trevor Donald Brewer and shortly afterwards overpowered by two German police officers. He was subsequently arrested. Portions of the airport were closed in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Northwest Runway and Runway 18 West were closed on 23 March and re-purposed for parking unused aircraft. Terminal 2 was also closed, and all passenger operations were concentrated in Terminal 1. The Northwest Runway re-opened in July to handle summer tourist demand, while Runway 18 West remained closed. With almost no passenger traffic in the spring months, Frankfurt's total passenger volume in 2020 fell to 18.8 million, the lowest figure recorded since 1984.

Airlines operating here · 89

Other airlines with direct routes

List taken from the airport’s own website (September 2026).

Photo: Steffen Wurzel · CC BY-SA 3.0 · view original

Data from OurAirports (public domain) · destinations and airlines from Wikipedia route tables (CC BY-SA, 2026), unless another source is given · profile and photo from Wikidata/Wikimedia Commons (CC0 / CC) · summary and history from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).

Cite

To cite this page in academic work, an article or Wikipedia, choose the style and copy the reference. The access date is today.

This page was last updated on October 15, 2026

APA

Vuelopedia. (2026, October 15). Frankfurt Main Airport (FRA). Retrieved October 17, 2026, from https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/FRA

MLA

“Frankfurt Main Airport (FRA).” Vuelopedia, Fundación Poderia, 15 Oct. 2026, vuelopedia.org/en/airport/FRA. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.

Chicago

Vuelopedia. “Frankfurt Main Airport (FRA).” Fundación Poderia. Last modified October 15, 2026. https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/FRA.

Harvard

Vuelopedia (2026) Frankfurt Main Airport (FRA). Available at: https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/FRA (Accessed: 17 October 2026).

BibTeX

@misc{vuelopedia_en_airport_fra,
  author       = {{Vuelopedia}},
  title        = {{Frankfurt Main Airport (FRA)}},
  publisher    = {Fundación Poderia},
  year         = {2026},
  date         = {2026-10-15},
  url          = {https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/FRA},
  howpublished = {\url{https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/FRA}},
  urldate      = {2026-10-17},
  note         = {Accessed 2026-10-17}
}

Wikipedia

{{cite web |url=https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/FRA |title=Frankfurt Main Airport (FRA) |website=Vuelopedia |publisher=Fundación Poderia |date=2026-10-15 |access-date=2026-10-17 |language=en}}