Salzburg Airport , branded as Salzburg Airport W. A. Mozart, is Austria's second largest airport. It serves Salzburg, the fourth-largest Austrian city, and is a gateway to Austria's numerous ski areas. The airport is located west-south-west of Salzburg city centre and from the Austrian-German border. It is jointly owned by Salzburg municipality (25%) and Salzburg state (75%). The airport is named after the Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. History Pre-World War II In 1910, the first powered aircraft taxied on to the new race track in Salzburg-Aigen. In 1926, Deutsche Luft Hansa inaugurated the Munich-Salzburg-Bad Reichenhall route. In 1927, the Vienna-Salzburg-Innsbruck route was started by ÖLAG (Austrian Aviation AG). In one of the earlier incidents Luft Hansa, which flew the London-Brussels-Frankfurt-Munich-Vienna route with Sabena, made a forced landing in Salzburg. 1939 saw the introduction of the Berlin-Prague-Salzburg-Venice and Munich-Salzburg-Klagenfurt-Ljubljana-Rijeka routes, which were planned for the summer schedule. The war years At the start of World War II, on 1 September 1939, Salzburg Airport was seized and in 1943 the "Luftgaukommando VII" in Munich was put in charge of it. In the autumn of 1944 the newly developed fighter jet Messerschmitt Me 262 appeared. When the United States Air Force first bombed the city of Salzburg on 16 October 1944, with a subsequent 15 air attacks on the city, the airport remained undamaged. Salzburg Airport was the first Austrian airport to become a part of European scheduled traffic again. Post war On 1 August 1958, a control tower was put into operation after a 15-month construction period and a new terminal was opened in 1966. The airport reached the target of 1,265,000 passengers in 2000, and British Airways announced flights to Salzburg from London. These flights were cancelled a year later. Also in 2001, low-cost carrier Ryanair landed at Salzburg, its first Austrian destination. This was also the first time an Austrian airport hosted a low-cost carrier. Aer Lingus commenced flights to Salzburg from Dublin for their winter schedule in 2005. In 2006, Ryanair started services to Charleroi, which ended in 2007, and Dublin. In spring 2014 the airport's home carrier Austrian Airlines announced the closure of their ticketing and service counters at Salzburg Airport due to decreasing demand. Additional services are instead provided directly at the check-in counters. In August 2016, German low-cost airline Eurowings announced it would open its second Austrian base in Salzburg, with flights to six European