Rostock-Laage Airport

If you land at Rostock-Laage for the first time, you notice quickly: this is no ordinary regional airport. Next to the modern terminal stand shelters, gray fighter jets taxi along the runway, and sometimes the thunder of a departing Eurofighter drowns out every conversation in the terminal. Laage is first of all a Luftwaffe air base – the civil airport shares the runway with the military. This very mix makes RLG interesting for spotters: little scheduled traffic, but one of the most important Eurofighter bases in Germany.

From NVA airfield to air base with a terminal

The history of the site begins in East Germany. From the end of the 1970s, the National People’s Army built a new military airfield near Laage, southeast of Rostock. From 1984, a fighter-bomber wing and a naval air wing were stationed there. With reunification the Bundeswehr took over the grounds – and with them a peculiarity: the NVA’s MiG-29s were the only fighter jets from East German stocks that the Luftwaffe kept flying. In 1994 the MiG squadron moved to Laage, to Fighter Wing 73 stationed there.

Almost at the same time, the site opened up to civil air traffic. The basis was a usage agreement with the Bundeswehr in the early 1990s; according to the airport, the first civil terminal went into operation on October 4, 1993. From 1994, Laage was also part of Deutsche Post’s night air mail network, in which chartered Boeing 737s flew letters through the night. In 2005 the current terminal was added, named after Hans von Ohain, one of the fathers of the jet engine.

Joint civil-military use: who does what here

The principle has become rare in Germany, but at Laage it is everyday life. The airfield belongs to the military, and the civil airport is a co-user. The runway, air traffic control at the field and large parts of the infrastructure serve both sides; the civil terminal with its own apron lies next to it. That is also why the site carries an ICAO code with ET, the prefix for military airfields in Germany, instead of the “ED” typical for commercial airports.

This split has practical consequences for you. Military flying happens mainly on weekdays during the day, while civil traffic is concentrated on a few fixed days per week. According to the airport, no night flight ban applies to civil operations – but hardly anything departs from Laage at night anyway, simply because there is so little traffic.

The “Steinhoff” wing: the Luftwaffe’s Eurofighter school

The main reason spotters travel to Laage is on the military side. Tactical Air Wing 73 “Steinhoff” is the unit in which the Luftwaffe trains all of its Eurofighter pilots. Under an agreement with Austria, pilots of the Austrian armed forces also learn to fly the jet there. The wing has carried its traditional name since 1997, named after Johannes Steinhoff, the Luftwaffe’s former chief of staff.

Laage was also at the front of the generational change: on April 30, 2004, flight operations with the Eurofighter Typhoon began there – as the first Luftwaffe unit. In August of the same year, the last MiG-29s left the site and went to Poland. Since October 2013 the unit has carried its current name. Since 2019 it has been complemented by the Luftwaffe Weapons School established at Laage.

In June 2023, Laage was part of the exercise Air Defender 23, at the time the largest air force exercise since NATO was founded. At such exercises guests from other air forces also show up – a rare opportunity for military spotters.

Civil traffic: holiday flyers instead of a hub

On the civil side, Laage is a typical regional airport with a big terminal and a small schedule. The terminal is designed for up to one million passengers a year – in fact the 2018 record was 296,027, and in recent years it has been only a few tens of thousands. Traffic today consists mainly of holiday flights. In the schedule for summer and fall 2026, Corendon flies several times a week to Antalya and in October to Heraklion on Crete. Seasonally, until September, ITA Airways was also on the schedule with a Sunday connection to Milan and Air Nostrum with a Saturday flight to Vienna. The airport lists a connection to Hurghada as planned.

The list of airlines that have already left Laage again is long. Germania was the most important airline for years and from 2017 had an Airbus A319 based at Laage year-round. Its demise in February 2019 hit the airport hard, especially as Flybmi filed for insolvency shortly afterward. Lufthansa served Laage at times from Frankfurt and from 2019 from Munich, VLM Airlines briefly connected the site with Cologne/Bonn in 2018, and Condor offered flights to Palma in summer 2024.

The cruise flights are a chapter of their own. Since the mid-2010s, cruise lines have used Laage to fly guests in and out for ships at Warnemünde – for example Costa Crociere from 2015 and Pullmantur with aircraft from Wamos Air. In June 2016, a Boeing 747 landed at Laage on a scheduled basis for the first time as part of this traffic. Since 2022, the fleet of German Airways has also been maintained at the site.

Ownership and operation: from municipal airport to investor

For a long time the civil airport belonged to the public sector: shareholders were, through a holding company, the Hanseatic City of Rostock, the Rostock district and the town of Laage. They covered the losses with public funds. In 2022 the Berlin-based Zeitfracht Group took over all shares. In July 2025 the next change followed: since then, according to its own statement, the airport has belonged to CRISP Partners GmbH, also from Berlin.

Besides passenger traffic, the operator relies on additional lines of business – business aviation, new hangar and commercial space on the campus, and events in the terminal, which according to the airport holds up to 1,000 guests. The grounds are also home to a flight school of Lufthansa Aviation Training and the helicopter squadron of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state police.

Spotting at Laage: what works and what doesn’t

According to the airport, there is no official spotter platform or freely accessible observation deck at Laage. The terrace café in the terminal does look out on the runway, but it is tied to tours and events – such as the flea markets that take place regularly in the terminal. The most convenient legal way to get a look at the apron is therefore an airport tour. According to the airport it lasts about 45 minutes, is offered by arrangement and ends in the terrace café.

In the terminal itself, the exhibitions are worth a look: a show on a hundred years of aviation in the region, an exhibition on the “Steinhoff” wing, through which soldiers give guided tours on request for groups of ten or more, and a spaceflight exhibition with models of lunar landers and rockets.

For takeoffs and landings from outside, note this: the runway lies in an east–west direction. With a west wind, aircraft land on 27 and come in from the east; with an east wind, on 09 from the west. Which direction is currently active, you can tell by looking at the wind or at a flight tracker. The basics are in the article Understanding the runway direction in use at an airport.

In terms of gear, for Eurofighters you mainly need focal length and fast autofocus: the jets are small, fast and often flying tight patterns. A telephoto lens in the range of 100 to 500 millimeters is a good starting point; more on this in the article on the right focal length for plane spotting. Where else in Germany you can see the Eurofighter is shown in the overview Spotting Eurofighters in Germany.

Special guests and exceptional days

Laage’s long runway and its military infrastructure repeatedly make the site a destination for unusual visitors. For the 2007 G8 summit in nearby Heiligendamm, the US president’s Air Force One landed at Laage. At NATO exercises such as Air Defender 23, aircraft from allied air forces were added. And cruise traffic occasionally brings widebody aircraft that you would hardly ever see at a regional airport of this size.

Such days are rarely announced long in advance. For military movements, services that show military aircraft with a transponder help you – how that works and where the limits are is covered in the article Tracking military aircraft online. Open days of the Luftwaffe, where you can also see an air base from the inside, are collected in the article Bundeswehr Day and Luftwaffe open days.

Laage in comparison

In the north and east of Germany, Laage is a special case. Hamburg Airport and Berlin Brandenburg Airport offer many times the scheduled traffic and fixed spotter locations, but hardly any military jets. Leipzig/Halle Airport attracts with night cargo, Dresden Airport with its observation deck. Laage, by contrast, scores with what the others do not have: Eurofighters in everyday training.

If you are interested in the military history of the region, the Military History Museum at Berlin-Gatow airfield also has aircraft from the NVA era. And if small airfields appeal to you in general, the article Spotting at small regional airports is worth a read.

Conclusion

Rostock-Laage is an airport with two faces. On the civil side it is a small holiday airport with a big terminal, whose schedule has shrunk considerably since the end of Germania and whose owner has changed several times. Militarily it is one of the Luftwaffe’s most important sites: this is where all German Eurofighter pilots learn their trade.

For spotters that means: if you come for the airliners, you need patience and a look at the schedule. If you come for the Eurofighters, you plan around the weekday, the wind and the rules at the air base – and on good days you are rewarded with plenty of action.