Lübeck Airport

Lübeck-Blankensee is one of those airports where on some days only a handful of jets land – and yet there’s more aviation history here than at many a major airport. A Prussian flying school, a Luftwaffe air base, a British base during the Berlin Airlift, then “Hamburg-Lübeck” for Ryanair, two insolvencies in two years and a series of owners from New Zealand, China and finally Lübeck itself. Ryanair has been flying again since 2025. For you as a spotter, LBC is a quiet, easily planned airport with a rail connection and a nice complement to its big neighbor Hamburg.

From air base to RAF base

The airport’s history begins in the middle of the First World War. From 1916 a military airfield was laid out in Blankensee south of Lübeck, and in 1917 the Prussian Fliegerschule Lübeck (Lübeck flying school) started operations there. After the war the field was demilitarized, some of the buildings disappeared in the 1920s, and the airfield lay largely fallow.

With rearmament from 1933, the military returned. The Luftwaffe expanded Blankensee into an air base (Fliegerhorst), and in the following years dive-bomber and bomber units were stationed here in turn. In 1940 the field served as a base for the German attack on Denmark and Norway. In 1944 the runway was paved with concrete to about 1,800 meters, and in the last months of the war the first jet aircraft even showed up here – the Messerschmitt Me 262 and the Arado Ar 234 jet bomber. On May 2, 1945, the day British troops reached Lübeck, the German flights ended.

After that the Royal Air Force took over. As RAF Lübeck the field stayed under British responsibility until German reunification. Its best-known episode came in 1948/49: during the Soviet blockade of Berlin, the RAF deployed about 30 Dakotas here – the military version of the Douglas DC-3 – which flew supplies such as coal to Berlin, with up to 100 sorties on peak days. The big picture of the supply flights is told in the article on the Berlin Airlift, the history of the aircraft itself in the article on the Douglas DC-3.

A civil airport on the inner-German border

From May 1955 civil powered flying resumed at Blankensee. The field lay only a few kilometers from the inner-German border. For about half a century the Bundeswehr (German armed forces) used Lübeck for target simulation flights – civilian-operated aircraft that towed or simulated targets for air defense. Over the years these included Spitfires, Hawker Sea Furies, OV-10 Broncos, IAI Westwind business jets and, most recently, Pilatus PC-9s.

A sad chapter in the field’s history is the crash of a Cessna Citation in May 1987: on approach to Lübeck both pilots were killed, while Uwe Barschel, then minister-president of Schleswig-Holstein, survived seriously injured.

For scheduled service, Lübeck remained insignificant for a long time. In 1997 the arrivals area of the terminal was at least rebuilt and expanded – an investment that would only pay off a few years later.

Hamburg-Lübeck: the Ryanair years

The big leap came in 2000. Ryanair started flights to London Stansted and marketed the airport as “Hamburg-Lübeck” – as an affordable alternative to Hamburg Airport, about 60 kilometers away. The pattern was the same as in Frankfurt-Hahn: low fees at a smaller airport, but a well-known big-city name on the ticket. More routes followed, and from 2006 Wizz Air also flew to Gdańsk and expanded its offering to Eastern Europe.

Passenger numbers rose significantly: in 2005 there were about 716,000 – still the record today – and after a decline, about 688,000 once more in 2009. Economically, the airport nevertheless remained a money-loser – in 2011 a deficit of over six million euros was on the books. At the same time, expansion plans for a longer runway and a new terminal dragged on for years and were accompanied by several lawsuits. From 2010 the numbers fell significantly and never reached the old level again.

Alternating owners: Infratil, investors, insolvencies

The real common thread of Lübeck’s more recent airport history is the changes of ownership. Hardly any German regional airport has experienced so many:

The New Zealanders of Infratil – who at the time also held stakes in other European regional airports – took over ninety percent of the shares in 2005. After four years they gave up, and at the end of October 2009 the city was the sole owner again. A new attempt to sell stalled politically in November 2012, and in 2013 the airport then went to a private investor.

Then things happened in quick succession. In spring 2014 the investor withdrew, and on April 23, 2014, the airport filed for insolvency. That same summer Ryanair left Lübeck after 14 years. In July 2014 PuRen Germany GmbH, a subsidiary of a Chinese corporate group, took over with ambitious plans – including aircraft from the Chinese manufacturer COMAC, for which there was neither an airline nor certification. On September 30, 2015, the PuRen company also filed for insolvency.

In mid-April 2016 Wizz Air, as the last scheduled airline, moved its Lübeck routes to Hamburg – scheduled service ended for the time being. In June 2016 the Lübeck city council (Bürgerschaft) approved the sale to Winfried Stöcker, the founder of the Lübeck laboratory diagnostics company Euroimmun. Since then he has run the airport through his own property and operating company. How insolvencies on the airline side have played out in Europe is shown, incidentally, by the article on the big airline failures in Europe.

Lübeck Air: the experiment with its own airline

With no scheduled service, the new owner relied on a solution of its own. Lübeck Air was initially active from 2016 with a Dassault Falcon 7X business jet for charter flights. In 2020 scheduled service followed: on August 17, 2020 – later than planned because of the COVID-19 pandemic – the first flight to Munich took off, with Stuttgart added. Lübeck Air was a virtual airline: the ATR 72-500 flew on behalf of the Danish Air Alsie.

In the following years the network grew to include seasonal destinations such as Salzburg, Bern and Olbia. From May 2022 German Airways deployed an Embraer E190 for Lübeck Air, and in 2023 further leased aircraft were added. In March 2023 Lübeck Air announced the end of the Stuttgart route and farewell to the ATR; from October 28, 2023, flight operations stopped entirely – at first only for the winter, then, according to a spokeswoman in January 2024, for summer 2024 as well. Since then the brand has not flown again, making it a historical chapter for spotters.

In parallel, the leisure airline Sundair brought Mediterranean flights to Lübeck from May 2022 and based an Airbus A319 there for summer 2024. In addition, tour operators offer charter and package trips from Blankensee – the difference between the two kinds of flights is explained in the article Charter flight and scheduled flight.

Ryanair is back

Then came the most surprising twist: after a good ten years Ryanair announced its return. Since March 30, 2025, the airline has flown from Lübeck again – to London Stansted, Málaga and Palma de Mallorca. According to the airport, London and Palma are flown several times a week, and Málaga is also served regularly. The already published summer 2027 schedule again includes all three destinations.

Lübeck is far from the level of the early Ryanair years with several hundred thousand passengers, but for the first time since 2016 there is again reliable scheduled service with a major airline.

For you as a spotter that means: scheduled traffic is dominated by a Boeing 737 fleet, usually the Boeing 737-800 or the 737-8-200. Which group company exactly is flying you can tell from the registration – the structure of the group is explained on the page for Ryanair Holdings.

Spotting in Lübeck: what you need to know

Lübeck isn’t an airport with a developed visitor area. On its website the airport mentions a large observation deck facing the airside as part of a planned conference center, but gives no opening date. Until then you photograph from public paths outside the fence. General tips for small airports like this are collected in the article Spotting at small regional airports, and an overview of similar destinations is offered by the article on regional airports in Germany.

Runway 07/25 runs roughly from west to east. In westerly winds – the normal case in northern Germany – takeoffs and landings are toward 25, and the aircraft then come in from the east. In easterly winds the picture flips, and runway direction 07 is in use, for which the airport has had a Category II instrument landing system since 2014. How to estimate the direction the evening before is explained in the article Understanding the runway direction in use at an airport.

Scheduled traffic is manageable. A spotting day in Lübeck is mainly worth it if you want to catch a specific Ryanair rotation or see a package flight. The times are on the departures and arrivals board; between scheduled flights, private aircraft, flight schools and business jets keep things going. General aviation in particular accounts for most of the flight movements in Lübeck.

Lübeck compared and in the region

The most important point of reference is Hamburg Airport, about an hour away by car. There you find everything Lübeck lacks: lots of traffic, widebodies and, with the Affenfelsen and the observation deck, two fixed spotting places. All the tips for the Hanseatic city are gathered in the article Plane spotting in Hamburg.

Farther east lies Rostock-Laage Airport, also a small airfield with shared military use. If you want to take in the German North Sea coast, Sylt Airport has leisure traffic in summer, and across the border Copenhagen Airport is Scandinavia’s big hub. Lübeck shares its history as the low-cost offshoot of a metropolis with Frankfurt-Hahn – both are good examples of how heavily regional airports can depend on a single airline.

Conclusion

Lübeck Airport is a lesson in how fragile the business model of a small regional airport can be. Over a hundred years of flying history, a boom with Ryanair, several ownership changes, two insolvencies and an airline experiment of its own lie behind the airport. Since 2016 it has belonged to a Lübeck entrepreneur, and since 2025 Ryanair has been bringing regular jets to Blankensee again.

For spotters, Lübeck isn’t a destination for the big type hunt but one for a targeted visit: check the schedule, estimate the runway direction in use, travel by train – and perhaps continue to Hamburg afterward.