Guides
Six airports in one state: how to choose in North Rhine-Westphalia
No other German state has six commercial airports. Most travellers only know two of them.
North Rhine-Westphalia is the most densely populated state in Germany and it has the airports to match: Düsseldorf and Cologne Bonn as the two majors, then Dortmund, Münster Osnabrück, Weeze and Paderborn Lippstadt. They overlap heavily, which means the airport with the cheapest flight is often not the airport nearest your destination — and in a state this dense, thirty kilometres in the wrong direction can cost you an hour.
What each one is actually for
Düsseldorf covers the Rhine corridor and the western Ruhr. It is the state capital’s airport and a business airport before it is a holiday one: three terminals inside one building, an unusual concentration of large cities within an hour, and the trade fair traffic that comes with drupa, K, Boot and MEDICA.
Cologne Bonn takes the Rhineland south of it, including Bonn and the Bergisches Land, and runs a substantial night operation — one of the few German airports without a hard night flight ban. If you are landing at three in the morning anywhere in NRW, it is probably here.
Dortmund serves the eastern Ruhr and is dominated by low-cost carriers, which puts a lot of its traffic outside normal public transport hours by design. Münster Osnabrück sits in farmland 25 km north of Münster and is the only sensible arrival for the Münsterland. Weeze is on the Dutch border, closer to Nijmegen than to most of NRW. Paderborn Lippstadt covers East Westphalia and the Sauerland, which nothing else does.
The trap is the Ruhr
It looks like one city on a map and behaves like thirty. The Ruhr is a polycentric conurbation — Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg, Bochum, Gelsenkirchen and two dozen more grew into each other without ever becoming a single city with a single centre.
The practical consequence is that a journey of twenty kilometres across it can cross three transport authorities and need two changes. There is no radial network to fall back on, because there is no centre to radiate from. A route that looks trivial on a map can be an hour of trains and platforms.
Essen to Düsseldorf Airport and Essen to Dortmund Airport are similar distances. The flight prices are usually not similar, and neither are the connections at six in the morning — which is the whole reason the comparison is worth making before you book rather than after.
How to choose
Compare the total journey rather than the fare. Check the road distance from each airport to your actual destination, then check whether a usable connection exists at the hour your flight lands. Those two checks resolve most of these decisions in about a minute.
For a destination in the Sauerland or East Westphalia, Paderborn will beat Düsseldorf even when the flight costs more, because nothing else is near and the rail alternative involves changes. For a village in the Münsterland, so will FMO. For anything in the Rhine corridor, Düsseldorf or Cologne Bonn will usually win outright.
For a Dutch destination, check Weeze before assuming a German airport is the right side of the border at all — Nijmegen is 33 km from it and Arnhem not much further. And if you are arriving overnight, Cologne Bonn is the one that runs at that hour.
Where the train wins
It is worth saying plainly that in NRW the train is often right. Düsseldorf and Cologne Bonn both have stations connected to the terminals, and for a single traveller heading to either city centre the rail option is faster at rush hour and cheaper at every hour.
The Rhine corridor between Düsseldorf, Cologne and Bonn is well served by frequent regional trains, and if your journey is city centre to city centre along that axis you should take them. Each airport page on this site says so, per airport, rather than leaving it out.
Where the train stops winning is the sideways journey: across the Ruhr rather than along the Rhine, out to the Münsterland or the Sauerland, or anywhere at an hour the low-cost schedules favour and the timetable does not.
What to take from this
- Six commercial airports in one state: Düsseldorf, Cologne Bonn, Dortmund, Münster Osnabrück, Weeze, Paderborn Lippstadt.
- The cheapest flight is often not the nearest airport. Compare road distance to your real destination, not to the city on the ticket.
- The Ruhr is thirty cities, not one. Twenty kilometres across it can mean three transport authorities and two changes.
- Cologne Bonn runs a night operation; Dortmund runs low-cost schedules. Both put traffic outside normal service hours.
- For the Sauerland or East Westphalia use Paderborn; for the Münsterland use FMO; for a Dutch destination check Weeze first.
FAQ
Questions this raises
How many airports does North Rhine-Westphalia have?
Six commercial airports: Düsseldorf and Cologne Bonn as the majors, plus Dortmund, Münster Osnabrück, Weeze and Paderborn Lippstadt. No other German state has this many, which is a function of how densely and evenly populated it is.
Which NRW airport is best for the Ruhr?
It depends which end. Düsseldorf serves the western Ruhr — Duisburg, Essen, Krefeld — and Dortmund the eastern — Bochum, Hagen, Hamm, Unna. Because the Ruhr has no single centre, the honest answer is to measure from your actual address rather than from "the Ruhr".
Is it worth flying into a cheaper NRW airport further away?
Sometimes, but do the whole sum. Add the transfer time and cost from that airport to your real destination, and check whether a connection runs at your arrival hour. In a region this dense, thirty kilometres in the wrong direction can cost an hour and undo the saving.
Which airport should I use for a destination in the Netherlands?
Check Weeze first. It is 33 km from Nijmegen and close to Arnhem and Venlo, which makes it nearer to much of the eastern Netherlands than Düsseldorf is — despite having been marketed as a Düsseldorf airport for years.
Read next
- From the gate to the city centre at all nineteen German airports At most of these airports the train wins. We would rather tell you which ones than sell you a car you do not need.
- Uber, Bolt, FreeNow and the German taxi: what actually picks you up Uber exists here. It is a different product from the one on your phone at home, and the reason is a law rather than a business decision.
- Airport shuttles in Germany: which ones are real, and when to take them A shuttle is a shared bus on a timetable. Eight German airports have a real one — and at three of them you should take it.
