The busiest airports in Germany, Austria and Switzerland – and what that means for spotters

Where is the most going on? Almost every spotter asks this before planning their first bigger trip. The usual answer comes from passenger rankings – yet those don’t tell you all that much. What happens in front of your lens is aircraft movements: every takeoff, every landing. This article shows you which airports in Germany, Austria and Switzerland lead by movements, why that produces surprises and how to use the numbers for your spot planning.

The short answer

By aircraft movements, Frankfurt is by far the busiest airport in the German-speaking region, followed by Munich and Zurich. Behind them come Vienna, Berlin Brandenburg and Geneva – and only then Düsseldorf and Hamburg. The order thus differs noticeably from the passenger rankings, and that is exactly what makes it interesting for spotters: it shows where the most aircraft are moving, not where the most people change planes.

Passengers or movements: what the numbers measure

Airports usually publish two key figures. Passengers count everyone who boards, deplanes or transfers. Aircraft movements count every takeoff and every landing – so a flight from Hamburg to Munich produces one movement at each airport.

For you as a spotter, the second number is the more relevant one. An Airbus A380 with 500 passengers and a small Cessna flying traffic patterns are equal in the movement statistics. That has two consequences:

• Large aircraft push movements down, relatively speaking. A hub with many long-haul jets has fewer movements in proportion than an airport with lots of small feeders.
• General aviation and cargo push them up. Private planes, flight schools, business jets and parcel freighters show up in the movements, but hardly or not at all in the passenger numbers.

How many movements an airport can handle at all depends on runways, taxiways and airspace – the background is explained in the article Airport capacity.

The 2025 ranking at a glance

The following table sums up the largest commercial airports of the three countries by aircraft movements. The German figures come from the ADV monthly statistics for December 2025, the Austrian ones from Statistik Austria, the Swiss ones from the Federal Statistical Office (BFS). All numbers are rounded.

Rank	Airport	Country	Movements 2025	Passengers 2025	Passengers per movement
1	Frankfurt (FRA)	DE	around 460,000	around 63.2 million	approx. 137
2	Munich (MUC)	DE	around 337,000	around 43.4 million	approx. 129
3	Zurich (ZRH)	CH	around 270,000	around 32.6 million	approx. 121
4	Vienna (VIE)	AT	around 240,000	around 32.6 million	approx. 135
5	Berlin Brandenburg (BER)	DE	around 193,000	around 26.1 million	approx. 135
6	Geneva (GVA)	CH	around 177,000	around 17.8 million	approx. 100
7	Düsseldorf (DUS)	DE	around 160,000	around 21.0 million	approx. 131
8	Hamburg (HAM)	DE	around 127,000	around 14.8 million	approx. 117
9	Cologne/Bonn (CGN)	DE	around 116,000	around 10.1 million	approx. 87
10	Stuttgart (STR)	DE	around 96,000	around 9.6 million	approx. 100
11	Basel-Mulhouse (BSL/MLH)	CH/FR	around 93,000	around 9.6 million	approx. 104
12	Leipzig/Halle (LEJ)	DE	around 74,000	around 2.1 million	approx. 28
13	Hannover (HAJ)	DE	around 66,000	around 5.3 million	approx. 81
14	Nuremberg (NUE)	DE	around 53,000	around 4.5 million	approx. 85

EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse is on French soil but is operated binationally and listed as a national airport in the Swiss statistics. The “Passengers per movement” column is a simple quotient and doesn’t take into account that cargo and general aviation flights are counted too – which is exactly why it is revealing.

The surprises in the ranking

Zurich and Vienna ahead of Berlin

Many people expect the German capital further up, but even in passengers, Zurich and Vienna each handle more than six million more travelers than BER – and in movements the lead is even clearer. Both are home bases of large network airlines – SWISS in Zurich, Austrian Airlines in Vienna – and operate a dense network of connections, which also includes many flights with smaller jets. In Zurich, the comparatively low quotient of around 121 passengers per movement adds to it: a noticeable share of the traffic there is smaller aircraft. Berlin, by contrast, is more shaped by point-to-point traffic and low-cost carriers.

Geneva ahead of Düsseldorf

Geneva has around three million fewer passengers than Düsseldorf, but more movements. One reason is obvious once you’ve been there: business aviation is very present at Geneva Airport. Business jets bring many movements but few passengers per flight – that also explains the low quotient of around 100 passengers per movement.

Leipzig/Halle: the outlier

With about 28 passengers per movement, Leipzig/Halle falls completely off the chart. The airport is one of Europe’s big cargo hubs; DHL runs its hub there, including with its subsidiary European Air Transport Leipzig. Many of these flights take place at night. It is similar, if less extreme, at Cologne/Bonn, where parcel carriers such as UPS and FedEx are active. Which freighters you’ll meet there is shown by the guide Recognizing cargo aircraft.

Movements without airliners: general aviation

A look at the smaller airfields shows how much the statistics can deceive. A few examples from the 2025 numbers:

• Paderborn/Lippstadt reports around 44,000 movements with only just over 700,000 passengers.
• Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden reaches almost 48,000 movements – more than Dortmund or Memmingen, which handle significantly more travelers.
• In Switzerland, the regional airfield Grenchen records around 59,000 movements, more than a third of what Geneva manages – almost exclusively general aviation and training.
• Bern-Belp has hardly any scheduled traffic left with around 45,000 movements, but plenty of light-aircraft operations.

For spotters, that is not bad news. At such airfields you see piston aircraft, helicopters, business jets and the occasional vintage aircraft – often from just a few meters away. If you only collect airliners, though, you should look closely before taking a high movement count as a reason to make the trip.

What the numbers mean for your spotting day

An annual total isn’t spread evenly. If you divide Frankfurt’s roughly 460,000 movements by 365 days, you get a good 1,250 per day – on average almost one takeoff or landing per minute around the clock. Because Frankfurt largely rests at night, the density during the day is even higher. In Munich it works out to over 900 movements a day, in Hamburg around 350.

With the calculator below, you can work out a rough estimate yourself for any airport:

Hubs work in waves

At hubs like Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich or Vienna, flights don’t arrive evenly but in bundles: first many feeders and long-haul jets land, then they depart again in a bunch. If you know the waves, you’re at the fence at the right time and have lunch during the lull. How to read the system is explained in the guide Understanding hub waves.

Night flights and cargo

The movement count at Leipzig/Halle or Cologne/Bonn looks impressive, but a large part of it happens in the dark. For daylight photos, there is far less going on there than the statistics suggest – but you often find the big freighters on the ground in the morning and evening. Which airports may operate at night at all is shown by the overview Night flight bans at German airports.

Season and day of the week

Leisure airports and hubs with a high share of vacation traffic have noticeably more traffic in summer and on holiday weekends than in February. The annual total hides that. For concrete planning, it’s worth a look at the day’s departure and arrival boards – how to read them is in Using the departures and arrivals board for spotting.

Runway system: how much of the traffic you really see

An airport with many movements and several runways spreads the traffic over different axes. At one position, you then see only part of it.

Airport	Runway system	What that means for you
Frankfurt	three parallel runways 07/25 plus runway 18 West	Depending on the spot and runway direction in use, you see only part of the landings or takeoffs
Munich	two parallel runways 08/26	You need spots at both runways to cover everything
Zurich	three runways in different directions	The operating concept changes over the course of the day, so adapt your choice of spot accordingly
Vienna	two non-intersecting runways 11/29 and 16/34	The runway direction in use strongly determines the right position
Geneva	one runway 04/22	Almost all traffic passes along one axis
Stuttgart	one runway 07/25	High yield per position despite a lower total

That is why airports with just one runway sometimes feel more productive than a major airport despite a smaller movement count: you simply miss less. How runways are named and why is explained in Runway designations at airports, and which side is currently active is revealed by Understanding runway direction in use.

Which type of airport suits you?

The top airports from a spotter’s perspective

Frankfurt offers the greatest variety in the German-speaking region: home base of Lufthansa and Condor, plus numerous long-haul airlines from all over the world and a large cargo business. A good introduction is the Zeppelinheim viewing platform; the Frankfurt guide sums up all the other spots.

Munich is the second hub of the Lufthansa Group. The visitors’ hill (Besucherhügel) between the runways is one of Germany’s best-known spotting locations; more tips are in the Munich guide.

Zurich is a classic for spotters: compact, well organized and with spots such as Butzenbüel or spectator terrace B. More in the Zurich guide.

Vienna combines hub traffic with many connections to Eastern and Southeastern Europe. The spotters’ hill (Spotterhügel) and the observation deck are the best-known stops; details in the Vienna guide.

Berlin Brandenburg has less long-haul than the hubs, but plenty of low-cost and leisure traffic. The BER guide gives an overview, and you’ll find the deck under Berlin Airport observation deck.

What to watch out for when reading rankings

• Always check what is being measured. Passengers, movements and cargo in tons yield three completely different rankings.
• Pay attention to the reference year. After the slumps of the pandemic years, the numbers recovered only gradually; Frankfurt and Munich were still below their pre-2020 movement figures in 2025.
• Factor in general aviation. A high count at small airfields often comes from flight schools and private pilots.
• Separate cargo and night. Movements at three in the morning do nothing for your daylight photos.
• Mind border airports. Basel-Mulhouse is in France, Salzburg borders Bavaria – country rankings don’t always capture that clearly.

If you want to evaluate your own trips, the article Analyzing your own spotting statistics has ideas on how to turn your sightings into a personal ranking – for example, at which airport you caught the most new registrations per hour.

If you’re venturing to a big airport for the first time, Plane spotting for beginners helps you get started, and Correct behavior at the airport fence keeps the trip relaxed.

Conclusion

By aircraft movements, Frankfurt clearly leads the German-speaking ranking, with Munich and Zurich following and Vienna and Berlin behind them. More interesting than the order, though, is what lies in the numbers: hubs with dense feeder traffic, cargo airports with night operations and small airfields whose movements consist almost entirely of general aviation. For your planning, what counts in the end is how much of it passes your position at your time of day.