Hamburg Airport marks over a century as world's oldest continuously operating airport

Hamburg Airport in northern Germany has been running since January 1911. According to the report, that makes it, by most accounts, the oldest continuously operating commercial airport on Earth.

It didn't start out for airplanes. The site began as a zeppelin terminal, selling tickets for airship journeys before fixed-wing aircraft took over as the main form of commercial air travel. Over the following decades it was rebuilt again and again to keep up with changing aircraft technology.

Today the airport, known by the code HAM, handles modern widebody jets. Its terminal complex has gone through repeated reconstruction, including expansions built to accommodate the Airbus A380. Emirates flies a Boeing 777-300ER service there most days of the week, landing on ground that has hosted air traffic since before the Titanic sank.

More than a century of continuous operation sets Hamburg apart from many other historic aviation sites. Some of those closed, relocated, or were destroyed during wartime and rebuilt elsewhere. Hamburg's location, by contrast, has stayed largely the same since its founding as an airship base.

The available material did not include specific passenger figures, ownership details, or expansion plans. The report focused mainly on the airport's origins as a zeppelin facility and its shift into a hub able to handle large modern jets.

Its history traces the broader path of commercial aviation, from lighter-than-air travel in the early twentieth century to today's long-haul widebody flights linking Hamburg to international destinations such as Dubai.