Kassel Airport — Calden, Germany

KSF opened in 2013 as a replacement for the smaller Kassel-Waldau airfield, built with the ambition of giving the Hesse region a proper international gateway alongside Frankfurt. The project became a familiar example in German media of infrastructure investment outpacing actual demand, since passenger numbers after opening fell well short of the projections used to justify its construction cost. Kassel itself, the city the airport is named for, carries a cultural profile far larger than its airport traffic would suggest: it hosts documenta, one of the world's most influential contemporary art exhibitions, once every five years, and it holds deep ties to the Brothers Grimm, who gathered many of their famous fairy tales while living and working in the city. Travelers flying into KSF today mostly find charter flights and low-frequency scheduled routes rather than the dense schedule originally envisioned.