Munich’s Franz Joseph Strauß Airport lays 40km north of the city centre. As a major hub for global flights, it is not surprisingly a huge, long complex of terminals with a Central Area. Lufthansa and its partners use the brand new Terminal 2.

Since the opening of the new Terminal 2 in June 2003, Munich has joined the Champion's League of international air travel. The double-capacity complex puts it alongside Frankfurt as the most important hub in Germany. A veritable glass-and-steel palace that cost €1.5 billion to build boasts 124 check-in desks and 114 gates sprawling on three levels. Poised to process up to 50 million passengers a year over the next 15 years, the number of direct flights to USA and Asia is also set to increase dramatically. Good news too for transit passengers, with transfer time between connecting flights slashed to 30 minutes.

The wide-open Munich Airport Center (MAC) is a sibling of the Sony Center in Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz: both were sired by architect Helmut Jahn. Unlike the Sony Center’s crowning Mount Fuji formation, here material is stretched tautly overhead like a school of seven stingrays. Practical services fill MAC and it is attached to both Terminals 1 and 2.