Dortmund Airport

Dortmund Airport is the third-largest airport in North Rhine-Westphalia after Düsseldorf (DUS) and Cologne/Bonn (CGN), and the principal low-cost gateway to the eastern Ruhr — Germany's largest metropolitan region by population at roughly 11 million people. With 43 scheduled routes to 36 nonstop destinations operated by nine airlines, DTM is dominated by Wizz Air and Ryanair, whose low-cost point-to-point networks give the airport an exceptionally wide destination footprint relative to its passenger volume. The airport operates from a single 6,562 ft (2,000 m) asphalt runway, 06/24, which limits operations to narrow-body aircraft; no long-haul widebody scheduled service operates from DTM. Dortmund's strength lies not in runway length but in the density of its catchment: a 75 km (47 mi) radius encompasses Essen, Bochum, Hagen, Hamm, and Münster, with DUS less than an hour's drive away. The terminal, built on the former flying school site at Wickede, handles roughly 3 million passengers annually and was privatized in 2005 before returning to municipal ownership. What makes Dortmund internationally significant is its role as a primary node in Central and Eastern European labor-migration aviation. Routes to Katowice, Warsaw, Kraków, Bucharest, Sofia, Cluj-Napoca, Tirana, and Skopje reflect the large diaspora populations of the Ruhr, and DTM handles more traffic to Poland than almost any other German airport outside Berlin. A night-flight curfew limits operations between 22:30 and 06:00, a restriction enforced after extensive litigation with neighbouring municipality Unna. The airport sits 13 km (8 mi) east of central Dortmund at an elevation of 425 ft (130 m).