The airport uses the facilities of the former military airbase RAF Laarbruch, and began operating as a civil airport in 2003. There is also a large fire department training facility on the airport grounds. Its IATA code is "NRN" because of its official name "Flughafen Niederrhein". The airport has had several different names in its history as a civil airport. The operators originally wanted to name it after the city of Düsseldorf, but the significant distance of to that city, which already had two closer international airports (Düsseldorf Airport as well as Cologne Bonn Airport), resulted in the name being blocked by a court ruling that such a description would be likely to mislead passengers. However, Ryanair still refers to it as ""Düsseldorf-Weeze"". The airport is actually closer to the Dutch cities of Venlo, Nijmegen and Arnhem, the German city of Duisburg, and the immediate Weeze area than Düsseldorf.