Fürstenwalde

52°23'38"N 014°5'59"E

Runway 08/26 - 1200x45m - concrete (CLOSED)
Runway 04/22 - 1200x45m - concrete/grass (CLOSED)
Runway 11/29 - 800x40m - grass (CLOSED)

Airfield Fürstenwalde (german: Flugplatz Fürstenwalde or Fliegerhorst Fürstenwalde, ICAO: EDAL) was an airfield west of Frankfurt an der Oder in Brandenburg, Germany.
After the original Fürstenwalde airfield was closed in 1925 a new airfield was built in 1937 during the resurrection of the Luftwaffe. The airfield was to become home to IV.KG152 "Hindenburg" with Ju52/3m.
Female test pilot Hanna Reitch used the airfield during the war to test the combat effectiveness of nearby FLAK units. In February units of Schlachtgeschwader "Immelmann" were based at the airfield to fight during the Battle for Berlin.

After the war the airfield was used by the Soviet air forces as a helicopter base well into the 1970s. During the era of the German Democratic Republic (East-Germany) the airfield became available to sportsflying in 1957, albeit with periods of inactivity. From 1971 it was used by the cropdusting aircraft of Interflug, the East-German state airline.

After the reunification (and the end of Interflug) the airfield became home to several flying clubs. The airfield was taken over by the Airport Operating Company Fürstenwalde (german: Flugplatz Betriebsgesellschaft Fürstenwalde mbH), which later merged with Danish Airport Development A/S. In 1998 a workshop was set up that reconstructed flyable replicas of historical aircraft like the Etrich-Taube, Albatros and Farman. 
The World War II era runway had become unusable because of wartime damage and non-avaition use. Therefore, the airfield used two seperate 854m grass runways, one for motorized flight, the other for gliders.


Fürstenwalde, 2000 (Google Earth).

The airfield was closed in November 2010, after a conflict between the owner and the main user (the local aeroclub) could not be resolved. Although the local municipality had struck a deal with the owner of the airfield about it remaining operatinal for the foreseeable future the owner decided to close the airfield after a series of incidents. In short, the aeroclub had always taken care of local air traffic control on behalf of the airfield, but could not find a replacement for the sole controller who had stopped earlier in April. This had resulted in an earlier closure of the airfield in the summer of 2010, because the owner deemed the risk too large. At the airfield itself there were numerous smaller incidents between the owner and the Aeroclub about rights of use, access control and so on. Ultimately both parties went to court and for a while things seemed to improve.
But the Danish owner had had enough and decided to close the airfield without warning. In spite of earlier agreements with the city of Fürstenwalde, they built a 39.5MW solar power array at the airfield. In a period of 10 weeks in 2011, the airfield was completely built over.


Fürstenwalde was still recognisable in 2010 (GPSTrophy.com).


Fürstenwalde had unrecognisably changed during 2011 (SolarHybrid AG).


Fürstenwalde in May 2014 (Google Earth)