Zurich Airport

Brief History:

• Zurich Airport is the largest international airport of Switzerland and the principal hub of Swiss International Air Lines. It serves Zürich, Switzerland's largest city, and, with its surface transport links, much of the rest of the country.

• In the Zürich area, mixed civil and military air traffic developed from 1909 onwards at Dübendorf airfield, northeast of the city. In March 1943, the government of the canton of Zürich commissioned a study to identify possible locations for the construction of a major airport.

• Switzerland's federal parliament decided in 1945 that Zürich was to be the site of a major airport, and sold 655 hectares (1,620 acres) of the Kloten-Bülach Artillery Garrison to the canton of Zürich, giving the canton control of the new airfield. 

• As had been expected the construction costs had been significantly exceeded. Locher & Cie was commissioned in 1954 to design various project options for the second construction phase. The canton of Zürich acquired a further 135 hectares of land for the expansion of the civil engineering works, which lasted until the beginning of 1961 in parallel with the construction of the buildings.

• On 18 February 1969, four armed members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) attacked El Al flight 432, firing Kalashnikov assault rifles at the Boeing 720B whilst it prepared for takeoff. The attack marked the beginning of a discussion about airport security that had never been raised until then in Switzerland

• In the second half of the 1970s, the volume of traffic continued to rise sharply, so the canton of Zürich, the FIG and Swissair worked out a project for the fourth construction phase. Zurich Airport completed a major expansion project in 2003, in which it built a new parking garage, a new midfield terminal, and an automated underground people mover to link the midfield terminal to the main terminal.