Although Munich Airport (MUC) is relatively well connected to the city, this will probably not be sufficient in the future.
So far, the city is connected to the airport by two S-Bahn lines and the Lufthansa Express Bus.
Due to the ever-increasing restructuring of the air travel sector in Europe (abandonment of short-haul flights and connecting flights in favor of more environmentally friendly rail connections), Munich Airport will lose its attractiveness in the future, as there is no direct rail connection like at other European airports such as Vienna (VIE) or Frankfurt (FRA).
Unfortunately, air travelers cannot go directly to Munich Airport by long-distance trains. This is possible in Frankfurt, for example, as there is a corresponding train station there.
In some cases, cities also offer an additional service, such as direct check-in at the train station. The suitcases are then taken directly to the plane and you only have to go through security at the airport.
None of this exists in Munich. Unfortunately, the reality is also that there are often disruptions on the S-Bahn lines and you sometimes have to buy additional S-Bahn tickets to get to the airport.
This makes traveling by train in Munich quite inconvenient. Travelers will therefore prefer to use other airports in the future. In this case, Frankfurt and Vienna, as both airports have similar flight connections, but are also easily accessible by long-distance train.
Several long-distance trains, even international ones, stop in Frankfurt and arrive directly at the station without changing trains (e.g. from Brussels, Amsterdam, Basel, or Vienna).
For this reason, Lufthansa urgently demanded that the city of Munich implement an express S-Bahn to the airport. And Lufthansa even set a deadline of 2025, with supraregional connections to follow by 2028 and long-distance train connections by 2030.
Of course, this deadline has no practical effect at all. It is simply intended to wake up the responsible parties to speed up the project.
But it is questionable whether this appeal will help. At the moment, there are a large number of transport and traffic restructurings in the Munich metropolitan area. And the implementation of a better connection to the airport depends on these.
For example, a second tunnel is currently being built under the city. This is intended to relieve the already frequently overloaded S-Bahn (commuter rail) system (all commuter trains in Munich have to pass through a tunnel with several stops in the city center. If there is a technical problem with a train or the tracks in the tunnel, there is a congestion and it results in delays on all lines).
The current plan is to complete this project by 2028. Whether there will be an express connection by 2025 and a long-distance connection by 2030 is therefore very questionable.
Photo by Daniel Abadia on Unsplash