Foundation and early years The airport uses the facilities of the former military airbase
RAF Laarbruch, and began operating as a civilian airport in 2003. There is also a large
fire department training facility on the airport grounds. Its
IATA code is
NRN because of its official name
Flughafen Niederrhein. The airport has had several different names in its history as a civilian airport. The operators originally wanted to name it after the city of
Düsseldorf, but the significant distance of to that city, which already had two closer international airports (
Düsseldorf Airport as well as
Cologne Bonn Airport), resulted in the name being blocked by a court ruling in 2016 that such a description would be likely to mislead passengers. However, Ryanair still refers to it as "
Düsseldorf-Weeze". Compared to Düsseldorf, the airport is actually closer to the Dutch cities of
Venlo,
Nijmegen and
Arnhem, the German cities of
Duisburg and
Essen, and the immediate Weeze area. Weeze was served by the short-lived, Dutch low-cost carrier
V Bird, which opened a base here and operated flights to
Berlin,
Munich and several international destinations, from its inception in 2003 until bankruptcy in 2004. During this time, passenger numbers doubled from 200,000 to 400,000 within a year. Between 2008 and 2013, this was one of Germany's fastest-growing airports.
Development since 2010 After peaking at nearly three million passengers in 2010, Weeze Airport began experiencing a steady decline in throughput, partially due to stiff competition from neighboring airports such as
Eindhoven and
Dortmund. In February 2014,
Ryanair announced the cancellation of 18 routes from Weeze for the 2014 summer season, citing a lack of aircraft. In 2019, the airport faced severe financial difficulties due to a fall in passenger numbers by 30 percent over the previous year as a result of the cancellation of several Ryanair routes. This was best exemplified by the cancellation of the London-Stansted route, which was one of the most popular destinations from Weeze airport for most of the 2000s and early 2010s. After passenger numbers collapsed during the
COVID-19 pandemic, Weeze Airport has experienced a minor resurgence in popularity, driven by Ryanair's introduction of several new routes and the re-emergence of many destinations. In 2025, Weeze airport welcomed over two million passengers for the first time in over a decade. ==Facilities==