Munich moved its entire airport in one night.
On the evening of May 16, 1992, the old airport at Riem worked its last departure, on time. The next morning the new one out in the Erdinger Moos worked its first, also on time. In between sat sixteen hours, around 5,000 people, and close to 700 trucks hauling everything from radar equipment to coffee machines across the city. Riem had been Munich’s airport for nearly fifty-three years, and then it simply stopped being one.
The one thing that did go sideways was the part they had rehearsed. The plan called for two Lufthansa jets touching down together for the cameras. What actually landed first on the morning of May 17 was a charter from Izmir, an Aero Lloyd MD-83 carrying a load of holidaymakers who had no idea they were making history.
Today Munich handles around 43 million passengers a year, second in Germany behind Frankfurt (FRA), with close to a hundred airlines serving more than 230 destinations. It has held a Skytrax five-star rating since 2015, which almost no airport in Europe can say. In March 2026 it counted its billionth passenger since opening, an American traveling with her family, met at the gate in Terminal 2, and sent off with vouchers for the airport brewery.
We will come back to the brewery.
First, though, something to get straight: this airport is not near Munich. It is about 35 km (22 mi) northeast of the city by road, out in flat farmland, and the larger part of it sits in the town of Oberding rather than in Munich at all. Plan forty minutes each way and you are fine. Plan twenty and you will watch your flight leave without you.
Getting There and Away
By Train
No ICE stops here. That catches people out who have just come through Frankfurt, where the long-distance platforms are a walk from the terminal. In Munich you ride the S-Bahn to the Hauptbahnhof and change there for the rest of the country.
Two lines serve the airport and they alternate, so something leaves roughly every ten minutes. The S8 runs through the east of the city by way of Ostbahnhof and Marienplatz, which makes it the one you want for the old town, and it runs through the night. The S1 loops around the west. Either way, count on about forty minutes to the main station.
Now the trap, and it gets locals too. On the way out to the airport, the S1 splits at Neufahrn. Half the train continues to the airport and the other half goes to Freising. The displays on the platform and on the carriage tell you which half you are standing in, and if you get it wrong you find out in Freising. When in doubt, take the S8.
Your ticket has to cover the outermost fare zone. A normal inner-city ticket does not reach the airport, and the machines make it easy to buy the wrong one when you are in a hurry.
By Bus and Taxi
The Lufthansa Express Bus runs nonstop between the airport and the main station in about forty-five minutes. And here is the part most travelers miss: it is open to everyone. No Lufthansa ticket required, no flight required at all. If your hotel is near the Hauptbahnhof and you have real luggage with you, that bus beats hauling suitcases down to an S-Bahn platform and back up again.
A taxi costs several times either fare and will not get you there faster. Regional buses connect the airport with Erding and Freising, and there is a direct coach to Ingolstadt.
Which Terminal
Two terminals, split by alliance rather than by where you are going. Terminal 2 belongs to Lufthansa and its Star Alliance partners, and it has a satellite building out on the apron, reached by an underground train, open since 2016. Terminal 1 takes everybody else, so British Airways, Delta, Emirates, Qatar Airways, Eurowings and the rest.
Terminal 2 is the odd one in German aviation. The airport company and Lufthansa built it together and still run it together as a joint venture, an arrangement the two recently extended out to 2056. You can argue about whether an airline should co-own a terminal. You cannot argue that it shows in the building.
Terminal 1 was the plainer of the two until April 2026, when a new pier opened along its side for non-Schengen flights. Around forty airlines use it, and it is where you now clear passport control on a long-haul departure from Terminal 1. If your last trip through Munich was before that spring, this part will be new to you.
Between the two sits the München Airport Center, the MAC, a covered forum with shops, restaurants, and the S-Bahn station underneath it. It is landside, meaning anyone can walk in without a boarding pass. Hold that thought.
While You Wait
Airbräu opened in 1999 and was the first brewery anyone had put inside an airport. The copper kettles stand in the middle of the tavern, the beer is brewed on the premises under the Reinheitsgebot (German purity law), and the beer garden next door is roofed, which in Bavaria is a good deal less of a compromise than it sounds. Roast pork and dumplings, and a brass band on a good evening.
The catch is worth spelling out, because people get this wrong. Airbräu sits in the MAC between the terminals, on the public side of security, so connecting passengers have to collect their bags, leave the secure area, and clear security again afterward.
On a two-hour connection, forget it. On a five-hour one, go. There is no gentler introduction to Bavaria than a Helles (pale lager) before you have even left the airport. :-)
From the middle of November until the end of December the MAC forum turns into a Christmas market, fir trees and stalls and an ice rink, all of it under the roof. It is a real one, not an airport imitation, and anybody can walk in off the S-Bahn.
Traveling with children, or the sort of adult who still likes watching airplanes? Get off one stop early at Besucherpark. The Visitors’ Park has a hill to watch the runways from, three historic aircraft you can walk around, and a mini-golf course. Free to walk in, which explains the Bavarian families who spend Sunday afternoon at an airport they have no intention of flying from.
Things to Know
The night rules here are looser than Frankfurt’s, and that is worth knowing if you are choosing between the two. Munich’s core quiet period runs from midnight to 5 a.m., with no scheduled passenger flights. Frankfurt closes at 11 p.m. So a delayed evening arrival that Frankfurt would send away to another airport can still land in Munich. In the shoulder hours, 10 p.m. to midnight and 5 to 6 a.m., the airport is held to twenty-eight scheduled movements a night, and only quieter aircraft qualify.
Connections are the other thing this airport does well. Walking distances are short, the signs make sense even at six in the morning, and the queues really are shorter than at most European hubs.
What Munich will not forgive is the journey out. Forty minutes from the Hauptbahnhof on a good day, longer at rush hour or when Deutsche Bahn is working on the track. Stack that on top of the hours you already budgeted for check-in and security, and an early intercontinental departure means leaving your hotel in the dark.
For flight status and gates, use the airport’s own English site. Still deciding where to come into the country? I have a page on airports across Germany, and one on Berlin Brandenburg (BER), which took a rather less tidy path to opening day.
The Runway That Was Never Built
Munich has two runways. It was meant to have three.
The third one went to the people of Munich in a referendum on June 17, 2012, and they turned it down, 54.3 percent against. Because the city holds a stake in the airport company, its representatives then had to vote that way too, and the project has been frozen ever since, kept technically alive in the courts but politically dead. In the summer of 2026 the airport and Lufthansa presented a large expansion of Terminal 2 that leaves the runway out entirely, which is about as clear an answer as anyone is going to get. Frankfurt fought its runway battle in the forest, and that fight cost lives. Munich settled the question on a Sunday afternoon.
Before You Go
This brings me back to that night in 1992. Five thousand people, seven hundred trucks, sixteen hours, and an on-time departure at both ends of it. We Germans have taken plenty of teasing about a certain airport in Berlin, and we earned every bit of it. But this one picked itself up and moved across a city between one evening’s last flight and the next morning’s first, and hardly anyone outside Bavaria has ever heard the story. ;-)