Munich Airport

Munich Airport (MUC) is Germany's second-largest air hub and Lufthansa Group's secondary long-haul gateway after Frankfurt, a role that has made it the only 5-Star-rated airport in the European Union per Skytrax's annual audit. Located on the Erdinger Moos plain 28 km (17 mi) northeast of central Munich at 1,487 ft (453 m) elevation, the airport opened in 1992 as a replacement for the noise-constrained Munich-Riem and was designed from the outset for greenfield scale. It handled 41.6M passengers in 2024, and its twin-runway system (08R/26L and 08L/26R, both 13,123 ft) separated by 2,300 m allows fully independent parallel operations at 90 movements per hour. Lufthansa and its Eurowings Discover leisure subsidiary operate the only dedicated satellite terminal in Germany: Terminal 2 Satellite, opened in 2016 and connected to the main T2 pier by an underground Personal Rapid Transit people mover, added 27 contact widebody stands and pushed the Lufthansa wave structure to six daily banks. The airline's A380 fleet, redeployed from storage in 2023, is based exclusively at MUC, with the twin of the Frankfurt long-haul network fanning out to Asia, North America, and the Gulf. MUC is notable for being the only European airport operating a licensed on-site brewery, Airbräu, and for its annual Tollwood and Christmas markets in the landside Munich Airport Center, a 20,000 sq m covered plaza between the two terminals. A planned third runway, approved by Bavarian courts but paused in 2018, remains in the masterplan. Frequent World's Best Airport rankings reflect a Bavarian operating discipline rarely matched at hubs of comparable scale.