Construction started in 1936. The first plane landed on 25 October 1939, signalling the beginning of air traffic. At this time it was one of the most modern airports in the world. It replaced the airfield at Oberwiesenfeld. In World War II it was home to Adolf Galland's legendary Jagdverband 44. It was almost completely destroyed by bombings on 9 April 1945. Until that day, civilian air traffic had also been handled in Riem. George Raffeld of the United States Rainbow Division was the first of the allied forces to arrive at the airport. He reported to his superior officers that the airport had been abandoned by the Germans. After the war Munich-Riem was the first airport in Germany to be used for civil aviation. Post-war operations started on 6 April 1948 with the landing of a DC-3 operated by Pan American World Airways. On 12 October 1949 the Flughafen München-Riem GmbH was founded. Wulf-Dieter Graf zu Castell became one of its managing directors. The airport's runway was lengthened to in November 1949. On 29 October 1958, the first jet aircraft, a Sud Aviation Caravelle operated by Air France, landed on the runway that had been lengthened by further. In 1962 more than one million passengers had passed through the airport. As early as 1963 the Öchsle Commission initiated a search for a new airport location as it was obvious that further extension would not be legally or politically possible. Constructing additional runways parallel or perpendicular to the existing one would require relocating a number of nearby communities. A number of accidents further encouraged the decision to build a new airport further away from the city and to close down Riem. In October 1965 a new maintenance hangar for jets, that had been built at a cost of DM 10 million, was put into operation and transferred to Lufthansa. In 1969 the Flughafen München-Riem GmbH was renamed Flughafen München GmbH. The main runway was upgraded to its final length of. In 1971 a new arrivals hall was put into operation, the passenger throughput having attained 4 million. On 31 December 1972 the long-time managing director Wulf-Dieter Graf zu Castell retired. Since the 1980s and into the early 1990s, the airfield was heavily congested. Originally the terminal was intended to house between 5 and 8 million passengers per year, but by 1991 the passenger numbers had skyrocketed to twelve million passengers per year, which was up to 50% to more than double the amount of passengers that the airport was originally designed to handle. Because the airport's taxiing system had been designed to be used as a smaller medium-size airport, it was unable to handle the large numbers of aircraft that used the airport. To continue operations preliminary annexes to the terminal were built, including a special hall for charter flights. During the night from 16 to 17 May 1992, operations moved to the new location near Freising. The IATA airport code MUC and the ICAO airport code EDDM were transferred to the new Munich Franz Josef Strauss Airport.
Reuse
During an interim time after the move, the remaining facilities were used as a venue for large events such as concerts and raves. Riem was well known internationally in the techno, alternative, and rock scenes. For example, the last concert ever of the rock band Nirvana was given there on 1 March 1994. On 17 June 1994, the Ultraschall techno club opened in the former kitchen of the cafeteria. The cultural centre was closed in the summer of 1996 because the area was needed for the Messestadt Riem. The transformation of the former airport to the Messestadt Riem with a name-giving convention centre, apartment houses and parks was one of the largest projects in urban planning of the city of Munich in the late 1990s and at the beginning of the 21st century. The only structures that remain of the airport today are the tower and the original terminal building, the Wappenhalle. Both structures are protected monuments. Moreover, a small stretch of the former runway still exists at the eastern end. In 2005, the former airport was the site of the Bundesgartenschau.
Accidents and incidents
On 6 February 1958 an Airspeed AS 57 Ambassador charter plane crashed soon after take-off. The accident - known as the Munich air disaster - cost the lives of 23 people including eight football players from Manchester United. There were 21 survivors. The British pilot, James Thain, was initially blamed for the disaster after investigators claimed that ice on the wings had caused the take-off attempt to end in tragic failure. However, Thain was finally cleared of any responsibility for the crash in 1969, by which time he and his family had suffered numerous incidents of verbal abuse, hate mail and even death threats from people accusing him of causing the crash. The cause of the crash was ultimately established as slush on the runway; there had been no ice on the wings.
