The airport is named after Franz Josef Strauss, who played a prominent, albeit sometimes controversial, role in West German politics from the 1950s until his death in 1988.

[11] In November 2015, Transavia announced their intention to establish their first German base at Munich Airport, which will consist of four aircraft serving 18 new routes by spring 2016.

[14] In December 2016, Lufthansa's low-cost subsidiary Eurowings announced that it would establish a major base at Munich Airport from March 2017, with 32 new routes.

[16] In February 2017, Transavia announced the closure of their entire base at Munich Airport by October 2017 after only a year of service due to a change in their business strategy and negative economic outlook.

[18] In February 2021, Lufthansa announced it would take over most of Eurowings's routes in Munich, with the exception of few domestic services and flights to Palma de Mallorca and Pristina.

It has a design capacity of 25 million passengers per year and is exclusively used by Lufthansa and all other Star Alliance members serving Munich except Turkish Airlines.

Lufthansa and Star Alliance partners stipulated the expansion of Terminal 2 without constructing the separate facilities for luggage claim, arrival and departure levels, etc.

This was to ensure the easy access for the passengers who appreciate the convenience of central plaza for checking in their luggage, going through the security screening, and such as well as transferring from one plane to other within Lufthansa and Star Alliance partner networks inside Terminal 2.

[37] Lufthansa and Flughafen München GmbH (Munich Airport operator) signed a letter of intent on 16 December 2019 to expand Terminal 2 Satellite.

The Memorandum of Understanding from Flughafen München GmbH stipulates that both parties reach the goal of becoming a CO2-neutral by 2030, utilising highly fuel-efficient aircraft.

The older Central Area (German: Zentralbereich), which was originally built as part of Terminal 1, hosts a shopping mall and the S-Bahn station.

The Munich Airport Center has a supermarket where one can shop from 5:30 a.m. to midnight every day, including Sundays,[39] as it is exempt from the Bavarian law governing retail hours of operation (German: Ladenschlussgesetz).

It developed a so-called "four-pillar strategy" with an overall concept designed to improve environmental protection; these four pillars include: From the beginning, the state-administered parts of nature conservation aspects were considered in the planning of the airport.

[226] The prevalent Erdinger Moos area with its many intersecting small streams, and woodland series was taking into consideration in the planning by the landscape architect.

[228] The construction in the Erdinger Moos area had a large impact on the water budget of the region, since the groundwater levels in the marshy landscape had to be greatly reduced by creating drainage ditches.

Existing watercourses, such as small streams, were not interrupted, but redirected so that they now run either around or underneath the property, limiting the effects of groundwater reduction to only the areas in which the airport is located.

In order to accomplish this, 100 km of sewer lines were laid, and seven pumping stations, a water treatment plant and four rainwater sedimentation tanks were built and put into operation.

The cleaning is done in the degradation system area, where soil bacteria decompose the glycol into harmless components of water and carbon dioxide.

They are positioned in a way that the emergency vehicles can reach every point of the apron, taxiway and runway in a maximum of three minutes, as long as no adverse weather conditions prevail.

If necessary, other rescue workers from the region or supraregional are used, the deployment coordination is carried out by the integrated control center which is also responsible for the area of the airport.

The north-southbound so-called "Flughafentangente Ost" ( literally: airport tangential road east) between A92 and A94 was finally opened in 2010 [236] with a single lane in each direction.

Discussions regarding a faster connection between Munich city centre and the airport have fruitlessly taken place for several years, as the journey time of 40–60 minutes faces ongoing criticism.

The biggest issue was frequent level crossing closures at Fasanerie and Feldmoching (total of 39 minutes for every hour), causing severe traffic congestions.

On 29 August 2013, the Bavarian Administrative Court rejected the complaints against the plan approval decision of the Neufahrn Link of October 2012 and therefore freed the way for a direct rail connection of the Munich airport from Regensburg, Landshut, Moosburg and Freising.

In the construction and financing agreement, signed by rail and free-trade in April 2013, it was agreed that the Neufahrn Link will be built and put into operation by the end of 2018.

[253] The shareholders of Flughafen München GmbH (FMG) stated that the construction of a third runway was necessary for the Munich region and for Bavaria as a whole, for reasons of transport and economic policy.

Various associations and institutions from economics and politics reacted in favor of the plan approval decision issued by the government of Oberbayern for the construction of a third runway at Munich Airport.

[254] The project for the construction of a third runway is particularly contentious in the directly affected airport region of the districts of Freising and Erding, but also in other nearby counties.

With this decision, the zoning authority, after the intensive examination and consideration of all ramifications, expressly approved the need presented by Flughafen München GmbH and the plans submitted for the third runway.

However, construction of the new runway may yet be delayed as the project has to have unanimous approval by the airport's three shareholders: Bavaria, Federal Republic of Germany and the City of Munich.