Foundation Built on farmland,
ASL lying NNE of the
Hoher Dörnberg, the
airport was opened on 11 July 1970. It has been operated as a
public–private partnership since 1991.
Redevelopment into a regional airport A completely new regional airport has been built next to the old airport to accommodate commercial chartered and scheduled carriers as well as the business and general aviation from the old airport. The new airport has officially opened on 4 April 2013 with the arrival of a
Germania flight from
Frankfurt Airport. The new airport faced several struggles when opened. The most important customer at first was the travel agency branch of
REWE Group, with charter flights to the Mediterranean region. Originally, these were planned to be operated by
XL Airways Germany. Following the bankruptcy of that airline,
Enter Air was contracted instead, but also pulled out on 20 March 2013. The flights to
Tenerife operated by
Germania were scheduled to end in October 2013 but already terminated on 22 August 2013 due to low demand. Additionally, the flights to
Antalya offered by
Tailwind Airlines were reduced in frequency and served less than once a week. Germania as the airports main user announced that their service to
Palma de Mallorca would resume in the 2014 summer season. They also took over the flights to
Antalya which had been offered by
Tailwind Airlines during the 2013 summer season. While no airline or tour operator offered flights out of Kassel Airport during the 2013/14 winter season, Germania operated two flights per week to
Palma de Mallorca and also two flights per week to
Antalya in the following 2014 summer season. In the winter season 2014/2015 Germania operated flights to
Antalya and
Fuerteventura once a week. The airline also announced flights to Palma de Mallorca, Antalya, Heraklion and Hurghada for summer season 2015 and therefore increasing their presence at Kassel Airport. On 15 March 2014, the airports' chief executive was fired with immediate effect. In January 2015, the airport was renamed
Kassel Airport.
Developments since 2015 In December 2015,
Germania announced it would reduce flights to and from Kassel due to low demand; the route to
Hurghada ceased entirely by 30 December 2015. In May 2016, it was reported that the airport's construction phase was under investigation for violating rules regarding competition and transparency during its procurement. In June 2016, criticism has been made public that there won't be any scheduled flights during the entire winter 2016/2017 schedule. The state government of Hesse will review the airport's financial prospect in 2017 and might vote for the airport to be shut down. In September 2016,
Germania announced that they will not return to the airport for the 2017 summer season leading to the cancellation of all three seasonal services to
Antalya,
Heraklion and
Palma de Mallorca and leaving the airport with barely any scheduled flights. Shortly after, newly founded German leisure charter airline Sundair announced they would base an aircraft at Kassel Airport during the 2017 summer season serving up to 13 weekly flights to destinations around the Mediterranean. The finance minister of Hesse stated that this would be the airport's final chance to establish sustainable operations before being legally downgraded to an
airfield due to a lack of consistent commercial services. In November 2016, the new German airline
Sundair announced that they will base an
Airbus A319 in summer 2017. They will operate charter-flights for
Schauinsland-Reisen, a German tour operator. In February 2017,
Sundair announced they will base an
Airbus A320 instead of an
Airbus A319 at Kassel Airport. In May 2017,
Amazon.com announced it would end its cargo flights from Kassel to
Doncaster Sheffield Airport which led to the reduction of freight operations at the airport by half as Amazon was the largest customer. Amazon maintains a major logistics and delivery facility in nearby
Bad Hersfeld. On 1 July 2017,
Sundair started their summer schedule flights. Due to the delayed delivery of their ordered
Airbus A320 the flights are operated as
wet-lease by Cobrex Trans with a
Boeing 737 and by other Airlines. On 27 September 2017,
Sundair started to operate their first
Airbus A320 from Kassel Airport, with the first commercial flight to
Palma de Mallorca; the day before,
Sundair received their
AOC. In December 2017, the state government of Hesse announced that they would not downgrade the airport to an
airfield as previously proposed due to an expected positive outlook regarding the negative financial and operational situation. In 2024,
Sundair announced it would withdraw the sole aircraft which it had based in Kassel since 2017. This led to the loss of most seasonal scheduled routes and sparked further controversy regarding the lackluster utilization of the airport. Shortly after,
Corendon Airlines also announced it would not serve Kassel in 2025. ==Facilities==