Mönchengladbach Airport
aerodrome in Germany

Mönchengladbach Airport (German: Verkehrslandeplatz Mönchengladbach, formerly Düsseldorf Mönchengladbach Airport, IATA: MGL, ICAO: EDLN) is a small regional airport located 4.4 km (2.7 mi) northeast of Mönchengladbach and 15.2 km (9.4 mi) west of Düsseldorf. It is co-owned by the company which also runs Düsseldorf Airport (70%) and the local utility company NVV AG (30%).
History
The British Army of the Rhine undertook an exercise in 1955, in accord with the then NATO-Strategy of quick reaction. They built a basic 'field-made' airfield on the grass-covered area for an air-landing-exercise on this site. On finishing this exercise, the British Army of the Rhine handed the area over to the Mayor of Mönchengladbach for use as an airfield. The airfield was taken into service as a small airstrip for gliders. A hangar was built in 1957, and the next year a control tower and passenger terminal were constructed. The construction of the 1,200 m (3,937 ft) runway that is still used today began in 1970, and it was completed in 1973.
From 1996 until 2002, the Belgian airline VLM operated direct services to London City Airport with Fokker 50 aeroplanes providing up to 24 weekly flights in each direction. From 1996 to 1999, the British Airline Debonair operated services to London Luton Airport, and when Debonair was put into administration, the services were taken over by European Air Express who also operated services to Munich and Sylt/Westerland until the airline ceased operations in 2007.
“Mönchengladbach Airport” enters the record as aerodrome in Germany. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mönchengladbach, Airport and aerodrome can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q33140. VIAF identifies the subject as 213962604. Authority coordinates are 51.230, 6.504. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1955, 1957, 1970 and 1973.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mönchengladbach Airport” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.