History

1950 - 1955: Economic growth

1950: On 1st October the German authorities resumed administrative control over Hamburg Airport. The sphere of responsibility of the airport administration (Flughafen Hamburg GmbH – FHG) grew rapidly. First of all, FHG provided the apron services for the airlines, then passenger, baggage and freight handling work were gradually added. German employees and civil servants worked side-by-side with the English.

1953: Air traffic control in Hamburg passed back into German hands. Since 1953, it has been the responsibility of the German Air Traffic Control Department, which was created in that year. 1st July 1953 was the first day since the end of the war when the Union Jack was not hoisted at Fuhlsbüttel. Henceforth, Germans were once again in charge of all the administrative functions at Hamburg Airport, although Germany was still not allowed to run airlines of its own.

Fuhlsbüttel was no longer cut off from the rest of the world, and passenger volume increased again. The enormous boom in air traffic at Fuhlsbüttel in the early 1950s was due to various factors. The division of Germany had a particularly strong effect on Fuhlsbüttel: Hamburg Airport was cut off from a large part of its hinterland. However, the city-state (Hamburg is one of Germany's federal states) benefited from its geographical position in the north of the country as a centre for traffic to and from West Berlin and Scandinavia. In this period, most foreign flights flown by the Scandinavian airlines were routed via Fuhlsbüttel.
The new boom created considerable problems for the cargo handling department, since the basement of the main building originally intended for the storage of air freight soon reached the limits of its capacity. As a temporary solution, the hangar was used for freight storage, and was then converted into a permanent cargo shed. Even this new facility, however, was not able to cope with the onslaught in 1953, so that a new area had to be set aside on the apron itself to allow freight to be transferred straight from the aircraft on to a truck.

Furthermore, Hamburg's geographical situation at the north-east corner of West Germany played a central role in the plans of the new Deutsche Lufthansa. As a "peripheral solution", Hamburg offered Lufthansa the chance to fill its little fleet more or less to capacity. Frankfurt, on the other hand, was intended more as an intermediate stop on domestic routes.
Hamburg was prepared to put up the buildings required according to the specifications of Luftag ("Aktiengesellschaft für Luftverkehrsbedarf" (Aviation Services plc), renamed "Deutsche Lufthansa" public limited company in 1954), and the city senate made the sum of almost 12 million DM available for the purpose. A long-term lease was signed with the Hamburg airport administration on 2nd December 1953: a new double aircraft hangar was to be built at Fuhlsbüttel as the technical base and maintenance facility for the future airline.
Summer 1953 saw the beginning of the construction work on the part of the site formerly occupied by the Borstel racecourse.

1954: The topping-out ceremony was held for new maintenance shed in August.

1955: On 1st March, Lufthansa began its first trial flights within Germany, and one month later, on the morning of 1st April, the blue-&-yellow flag with the crane was hoisted once more at Hamburg Airport. The Treaty of Paris returned full sovereignty to Germany in May 1955, so that the "crane" was able to fly on its new European routes a few days later. Accompanied by fitting ceremonies and speeches, the routes to London, Madrid and Paris were inaugurated, and other routes followed.

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