# Geilenkirchen Air Base (GKE)

> Geilenkirchen, DE · IATA: GKE · ICAO: ETNG · Medium Airport

## Quick Facts

| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| IATA | `GKE` |
| ICAO | `ETNG` |
| City | Geilenkirchen |
| Country | DE |
| Type | Medium Airport |
| Elevation | 90 m |
| Cargo | ❌ |
| GPS | 50.96080, 6.04242 |

## Description

NATO's airborne early-warning fleet has its home at Geilenkirchen Air Base (IATA: GKE, ICAO: ETNG) in North Rhine-Westphalia, the alliance's only permanent main operating base on German soil, with 14 Boeing E-3A AWACS aircraft that have flown since 1982 and are due to retire around 2035. After several NATO nations dropped the planned purchase of six Boeing E-7A Wedgetail successors in November 2025, eleven allies — Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania and Sweden — agreed on 7 July 2026 to jointly procure up to ten Saab GlobalEye aircraft built on the Bombardier Global 6500. No contract has been signed yet; negotiations with the NATO Support and Procurement Agency are under way and no delivery schedule is fixed. The base is closed to civil and cargo aviation: no public freight terminal, no commercial customs clearance, no slots for forwarder traffic. In the Germany–Belgium–Netherlands border triangle, the nearest genuine freight airports are Maastricht-Aachen (MST) roughly 25 kilometres to the north-west and Liège (LGG) some 60 kilometres west, both established freighter stations. For volume and carrier choice, Cologne/Bonn (CGN) and Düsseldorf (DUS) are the obvious German alternatives.

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*Freight Academy — Airport Profile: [https://www.freight-academy.com/en/information/airports/geilenkirchen-air-base-airport-gke](https://www.freight-academy.com/en/information/airports/geilenkirchen-air-base-airport-gke)*

*Markdown mirror: [https://www.freight-academy.com/api/md/airports/en/geilenkirchen-air-base-airport-gke](https://www.freight-academy.com/api/md/airports/en/geilenkirchen-air-base-airport-gke)*

*LLM-Summary (JSON): https://www.freight-academy.com/api/v1/airports/geilenkirchen-air-base-airport-gke/llm-summary*