Weeze Airport

Weeze Airport or Niederrhein Airport (IATA: NRN, ICAO: EDLV) is an airport situated 3.7 km (2.3 mi) southwest of the small municipality of Weeze in the Lower Rhine (Niederrhein) region of western Germany. It is 7 km (4.3 mi) northwest of Kevelaer, about 33 km (21 mi) southeast of Nijmegen, Netherlands, and 48 km (30 mi) northwest of Duisburg. It uses the facilities of the former military airbase RAF Laarbruch, and began operations as a civil airport in 2003.

Weeze Airport is used mostly by low-cost carriers, mainly Ryanair. Its IATA-Code is NRN because of its official name Flughafen Niederrhein.

The airport has undergone several name changes. The operators originally wanted to name it after the city of Düsseldorf, but the significant distance (70 km (43 mi)) to that city, which already had three closer international airports (Düsseldorf International, Düsseldorf-Mönchengladbach and Cologne/Bonn), resulted in the name being blocked by a court ruling that it was likely to mislead passengers. However, airlines which use the airport, particularly Ryanair, still refer to it as 'Düsseldorf (Weeze)'.

The airport actually serves better the closer Dutch cities of Venlo, Nijmegen and Arnhem, the German city of Duisburg and the immediate Weeze area.

There is a big firebrigade training centre at the grounds of the airport. There are 9 direct public buses to Düsseldorf per day. There are also buses to Weeze, Kevelaer, Duisburg and Essen in Germany and to the Dutch cities Nijmegen, Venlo and Arnhem every hour.

In 2008, with 1.52 mil. passengers, which represented growth of 80% on the previous year, it was among Europe’s fastest-growing airports.

The runway is closed from Mon 12th to 14th Nov 2012 for maintenance. Ryanair has cancelled all flights between those dates.