Airbus Hamburg-Finkenwerder, also known as Hamburg Finkenwerder Airport , is an aircraft

manufacturing plant A factory, manufacturing plant or a production plant is an Industry (manufacturing), industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with Outline of industrial machinery, machinery, where workers manufacturing, manuf ...

and associated private

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surfa ...

in the Finkenwerder quarter of southwest

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; nds, label=Hamburg German, Low Saxon, Hamborg ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (german: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg; nds, label=Low Saxon, Friee un Hansestadt Hamborg),. is the List of cities in Germany by popul ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

. The airport is an integral part of the

Airbus Airbus SE (; ; ; ) is a European multinational aerospace corporation. Airbus designs, manufactures and sells civil and military aerospace products worldwide and manufactures aircraft throughout the world. The company has three divisions: '' ...

owned plant, and is exclusively used by them for corporate, freight, test and delivery flights, including the former

Airbus A380 The Airbus A380 is a large wide-body airliner that was developed and produced by Airbus. It is the world's largest passenger airliner and only full-length double-deck jet airliner. Airbus studies started in 1988, and the project was annou ...

History

In 1933 the

Blohm & Voss Blohm+Voss (B+V), also written historically as Blohm & Voss, Blohm und Voß etc., is a German shipbuilding and engineering company. Founded in Hamburg in 1877 to specialise in steel-hulled ships, its most famous product was the World War II battl ...

shipbuilding company in

decided to diversify into aircraft manufacture, believing that there would soon be a market for all-metal, long-range

flying boat A flying boat is a type of fixed-winged seaplane with a hull, allowing it to land on water. It differs from a floatplane in that a flying boat's fuselage is purpose-designed for floatation and contains a hull, while floatplanes rely on fuselag ...

s, especially with the German state airline

Deutsche Luft Hansa ''Deutsche Luft Hansa A.G.'' (from 1933 styled as ''Deutsche Lufthansa'' and also known as ''Luft Hansa'', ''Lufthansa'', or DLH) was a German airline, serving as flag carrier of the country during the later years of the Weimar Republic and t ...

. They also felt that their experience with all-metal marine construction would prove an advantage. In order to do this, they created the

Hamburger Flugzeugbau ''Hamburger Flugzeugbau'' (HFB) was an aircraft manufacturer, located primarily in the Finkenwerder quarter of Hamburg, Germany. Established in 1933 as an offshoot of Blohm & Voss shipbuilders, it later became an operating division within its par ...

(HFB) as a

subsidiary company A subsidiary, subsidiary company or daughter company is a company owned or controlled by another company, which is called the parent company or holding company. Two or more subsidiaries that either belong to the same parent company or having a sam ...

. Initially manufacturing was carried out at the Blohm & Voss shipbuilding works, with an inland airfield and final assembly building for landplanes at Wenzendorf Aircraft Factory.Hans Amtmann; "Blohm und Voss Remembered" (Part 1), ''Aeroplane Monthly'', February 1998 pp. 22–27Pohlmann, Hermann. Chronik Eines Flugzeugwerkes 1932-1945. B&V - Blohm & Voss Hamburg - HFB Hamburger Flugzeugbau'' (in German). Motor Buch Verlag, 1979 Bill Gunston; ''World Encyclopedia of Aero manufacturers'', 2nd Edition, Sutton, 2005. In 1937, the HFB was reconstituted as a operating division of Blohm & Voss rather than as a separate company, and the Finkenwerder aircraft works and associated airfield were established in 1939 by this division. The works were substantially undamaged during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

and when manufacturing was revived there, using the previous HFB company identity, the facilities began a long series of progressive expansions and modernizations. During the

Berlin Airlift The Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 – 12 May 1949) was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, ro ...

detachments from both

No. 201 Squadron RAF Number 201 Squadron is a squadron of the Royal Air Force. It currently operates the Boeing Poseidon MRA1 from RAF Lossiemouth, Moray. It is the only squadron affiliated with Guernsey, in the Channel Islands. This affiliation started in 1935 a ...

and No. 230 Squadron RAF flew

Short Sunderland The Short S.25 Sunderland is a British flying boat patrol bomber, developed and constructed by Short Brothers for the Royal Air Force (RAF). The aircraft took its service name from the town (latterly, city) and port of Sunderland in North Ea ...

V's In 1964 both the

HFB 320 Hansa Jet The HFB 320 Hansa Jet is a twin-engine, ten-seat business jet that was designed and produced by German aircraft manufacturer Hamburger Flugzeugbau between 1964 and 1973. The most recognisable and unconventional feature of the aircraft is its for ...

and the third prototype

Transall C-160 The Transall C-160 is a military transport aircraft, produced as a joint venture between France and Germany. "Transall" is an abbreviation of the manufacturing consortium Transporter Allianz, comprising the companies of MBB, Aerospatiale, and ...

made their first flights from the airport. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, HFB and its Finkenwerder facility eventually became part of

. Between April 2006 and July 2007, the runway was extended at the southern end, increasing its length from 2,684 m to 3,183 m, in order to accommodate the planned freight version of the

. The foundations of the Fink II submarine pen are extant just east of the north end of the runway.

Design

There is a Styling Department of Interiors at the ZAL Centre for Applied Aviation Research GmbH Building and Research with Hydrogen for future Combustive.

Manufacturing

The Airbus site at Finkenwerder is the main operations centre for Airbus Operations GmbH and employs around 15,000 people. The Hamburg factory manufactures and equips the forward and rear fuselage sections of the A330 and

A350 XWB The Airbus A350 is a long-range, wide-body twin-engine jet airliner developed and produced by Airbus. The first A350 design proposed by Airbus in 2004, in response to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, would have been a development of the A330 w ...

. Final assembly is carried out for all models of the

A320 family The Airbus A320 family is a series of narrow-body airliners developed and produced by Airbus. The A320 was launched in March 1984, first flew on 22 February 1987, and was introduced in April 1988 by Air France. The first member of the fami ...

and fitted with their cabin interiors and painted for final delivery. A large global spares centre is also maintained, holding some 120,000 parts, as well as A320 series maintenance training facilities. The airport forms an integral part of these manufacturing operations.

Airport flights

There are no public scheduled services at Finkenwerder. The airport handles around 10 to 15 aircraft movements per day. Most are transfer, freight, and test flights for Airbus manufacturing. The twice-daily corporate shuttle service to the Airbus plant in

Toulouse Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and fr ...

has been operated by the Spanish operator

Volotea Volotea (stylised VOLOTEΛ) is a Spanish low-cost airline registered in Castrillón, Asturias, Spain, with bases in Spain, Italy, France and Greece. History Volotea was established by Alaeo S.L. from Barcelona, a company created by former Vue ...

since 4 November 2019 on a five year contract. Previously the service was operated by

Germania Germania ( ; ), also called Magna Germania (English: ''Great Germania''), Germania Libera (English: ''Free Germania''), or Germanic Barbaricum to distinguish it from the Roman province of the same name, was a large historical region in north-c ...

Incidents and accidents

* In 1967 the pilot of a Spantax

Convair 990 Coronado The Convair 990 Coronado is an American narrow-body four-engined jet airliner produced between 1961 and 1963 by the Convair division of American company General Dynamics. It was a stretched version of its earlier Convair 880 produced in respons ...

mistook the 1360 m long runway of Finkenwerder for the 3000 m long runway of

Hamburg Airport Hamburg Airport , known in German as ''Flughafen Hamburg'', is a major international airport in Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany. Since November 2016 the airport has been christened after the former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt. ...

in Fuhlsbüttel, and only just brought the aircraft to a stop before the end of the runway.

References

Citations

Bibliography

External links

* * * {{authority control Aircraft assembly plants in Germany Finki Buildings and structures in Hamburg-Mitte 1939 establishments in Germany Airbus