Friedrichshafen Airport (, ; also known as Bodensee Airport Friedrichshafen) is a minor international airport 1.9 miles (3 km) north of Friedrichshafen, Germany, on the banks of Lake Constance (German: Bodensee). It is the third biggest airport in the German state of Baden-Württemberg after Stuttgart and Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden and served 559,985 passengers in 2015. Friedrichshafen features flights to European metropolitan and leisure destinations. Due to its proximity to the Austrian Alps it is also heavily used during the winter by skiing tourists. The Messe Friedrichshafen convention center is just north of the airport's runway. The center hosts an annual European general aviation conference AERO Friedrichshafen and other conferences. History This airport was established at , north-east of Friedrichshafen in 1915 when the first hangars were constructed. The first scheduled passenger flights with Zeppelin airships started from here, long before they were relocated to Frankfurt/Zeppelinheim. Friedrichshafen saw its first scheduled passenger flights in 1929 with Deutsche Luft Hansa services to Stuttgart-Böblingen Airport. By 1935 the flights were being made in Junkers Ju-52 passenger aircraft. Important engineering firms such as Maybach and Zahnradfabrik Friedrichshafen (ZF), subsidiaries of Luftschiffbau Zeppelin, were also founded in Friedrichshafen. During World War 2, their engines and gearboxes for tanks were flown directly from the airport to e.g. Kharkov, to replenish much-needed supplies during the Battle of Kursk. Delta Air established the first successful post-war regional flights in 1978, flying to Stuttgart and Zürich. A new terminal building and runway were built between 1988 and 1994. Another new terminal was opened in 2010. InterSky, based at the airport, shut down its key route to Cologne Bonn Airport, which it had operated for seven years, in October 2010 due to tough competition from Germanwings which started flying the same route in spring 2010. Germanwings closed the route on 14 June 2015. On 5 November 2015, InterSky ceased all operations due to financial difficulties, leading to the termination of domestic connections to Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne and Düsseldorf. In December 2015, it was announced that the airport might need financial support from its majority owners—the city of Friedrichshafen and the surrounding county—as the shutdown of InterSky—one of the airport's largest customers—led to financial difficulties. Also in December 2015, VLM Airlines announced it would base three aircraft in Friedrichshafen to take over the domestic routes to Berlin, Düsseldorf and Hamburg previously provided by InterSky. However, VLM went bankrupt in June 2016, leaving these