In 2013, the airport finally opened, and made headline news. Roughly 240 million Euro ($300 million dollars) was spent on it. The old runway was around 4,300-odd feet long and there was no commercial use for it. The local political folks rigged up the system....got the massive pot of money, built a fair sized terminal, lengthen the runway to roughly 8,500 ft, and made it capable of handling most aircraft in the world. Then they opened the airport up....only to discover virtually no one wanted to run commercial airlines out of this airport in the middle of nowhere.
I got there on a Sunday afternoon....to find the parking lot full of roughly thirty cars. Parking is free.....which matters in this case. The parked cars? All local folks who've come over to have a coffee....walk through the interior, and marvel at the fancy nature of the small airport which cost them 240 million Euro.
To be honest, it's NOT in Kassel. It's in Calden, which is a ten-minute drive out the side of Kassel. Calden? Well....it's a small town with a couple of banks, a gas station or two, several pubs, two grocery operations, and 7,000 folks. The general appearance of Calden is a farming town in the middle of nowhere. Autobahn connection? You'd have to drive at least fifteen minutes in either two directions....to hit the nearest entry point. My general advice.....don't drive into Kassel, and then maneuver through Kassel to reach the airport.
The previous runway wasn't much to talk about. It was mostly a place where guys parked their private planes for a cheap price, and learned how to fly.
There was some belief that "if you built it....they would come". The political folks felt that a small airport would get into the summer vacation business, and cheap airlines would love the cheap nature of parking there. The deal currently is no airlines operate during the winter months.....while one airline operates a direct trip to a coast town in Turkey twice a week, and a direct run out to some Spanish isle twice a week, during spring and summer. Otherwise, nothing goes on at the airport.
Security and support staff? Well....they have to keep the airport generally open. So there's a welcome guy, a coffee shop operation (two folks), at least four cops or customs folks there for seven days a week. I'd guess a clean-up crew comes out daily, and some maintenance guy fixes broken lights, while a landscaping crew mows acres and acres of grass.
The rental car shops? Well.....two exist and I'm guessing each have two or three cars parked there....but no one comes by to rent much of anything. Both shops were deserted when I walked through.
It is a fancy upscale airport by all standards. I'd guess there are two gates (A and B). On an average summer day, there might be two-hundred-and-fifty folks who transit through (going or coming)....to some vacation paradise.
A waste of money? Yeah. Maybe in twenty years....as folks might develop this into a major tourist hub, with a dozen flights a day in the spring and summer. Right now? It's just a nice big parking lot, with a nicely heated interior, and a nice coffee shop serving decent three-star coffee. If you happen to venture through Kassel and want to look at the top five sights of the local area....sadly, this would probably be one of them.
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