Suhl, Germany: Arriving/Departing Leipzig-Halle Flughafen (LEJ)

31AUG08 Leipzig-Halle Flughafen, Leipzig Germany (LEJ)

It was 3:47a when the train pulled into the station at LEJ. We were a minute early as we had left a minute early.

The airport is much larger than I thought and there were maybe five of us on the entire platform. I looked around a bit and then went upstairs two levels to the check-in area.

There was a crowd of people being checked in for a 5:30a Air Berlin (AB) flight to Mallorca, a 5:30a to Las Palmas and another at 5:25a by Condor (DE) to Herkalion. All the other counters including Lufthansa's (LH) were empty.

I walked the length of the walkway to the departure/arrivals area to kill time and also to scope out the airport. Nice airport and quite large.





I then headed back to the check-in area which was not yet open, but the agents were preparing. In a few minutes, it opened up at 4:30a. I waited a bit until the line was cleared and then got checked in. I got a seat for this flight and was on the standby list for the flight to Houston from Frankfurt.

I looked around a bit again to try to figure out exactly where the active runways were and then headed back upstairs and made the long trek to the departure area. Here is a model of the airport from 2001. It changed somewhat since then.


I cleared security and noticed that there was a flight crew in the crew line. It puzzled me as there were too many of them for any of the departing flights. I then noticed that they were from World Airways and later found out they were doing a charter to the U.S., Bangor, Maine I think. The flight was actually in transit when it got here and is an hour late today.

After security, I went up to the gate and waited. The other flights were in their final stages of boarding. Mine would not start until 6:05a, that is another 45 or so minutes away.