Frankfurt Airport (FRA) is one of Europe's leading air transportation hubs and is number one airport for cargo. Welcoming over 54 million departing, arriving, and transfer passengers in 2007, FRA expects to handle more than 88 million passenger in 2020. This represents an annual passenger increase of 3.5 percent at Germany's largest airport. Demand for aircraft movements will rise to approximately 700,000 takeoffs and landings by 2020, versus 492,569 in 2007. To accommodate this capacity increase it is necessary to expand Frankfurt Airport. Plans call for constructing a new landing runway and a third passenger terminal. In addition to the airport expansion program, a new Lufthansa maintenance base for the A380 superjumbo is being constructed. Zoning for the A380 maintenance base was granted in a separate approval procedure independent of the zoning procedure for the expansion of FRA.

As part of the zoning procedure for FRA's expansion, Fraport AG made a commitment to minimize as much as possible the impact of the capacity expansion on people and nature in the airport environs.