Cardiff Airport Parking

Cardiff airport history

The history of Cardiff International Airport extends back 60 years to the early 1940’s when the Air Ministry requisitioned land in the rural Vale of Glamorgan to set up a wartime satellite aerodrome and training base for RAF Spitfire pilots. Construction work commenced in 1941, and the airfield officially began life on 7 April 1942 when it was taken over by No 53 Operational Training Unit. The commercial potential of the runway was recognised in the early 1950’s with Aer Lingus starting a service to Dublin in 1952. A new terminal building followed, along with flights to France, Belfast and Cork. An escalation in holiday charter business resulted in passenger throughput exceeding 100,000 in 1962.

1986 saw a further extension of 750 ft to the runway, costing in the region of £1 million, thus attracting more business to the airport in the form of new generation jet aircraft. Development of transatlantic links were made with charter flights to Florida, in addition to the previously established links with Canada. The runway extension, enabling the airport to handle 747 jumbo jets, was instrumental in attracting the British Airways Maintenance facility to Cardiff International Airport. The maintenance hangar is one of the largest in the world (at 250 metres x 175 metres) and provides heavy airframe and engineering maintenance for the British Airways fleet and third party carriers.

The early 1990’s saw a significant boost to the airport’s scheduled services when Manx Airlines established their European air route hub at Cardiff, offering daily services to key business destinations within Europe and the UK. Consequently scheduled passenger levels exceeded 100,000 for the first time in a single year.

In April 1995, due to planned Local Government re-organisation in Wales, the Airport Company was privatised, with shares being sold to Welsh property and development firm, TBI Plc, now a subsidiary of abertis airports.

The airport is not only the main maintenance base for British Airways but also home to a variety of aerospace-oriented firms, and therefore a major contributor to the economic development of the region.

Cardiff Airport attracts over two million passengers a year, according to the UK Civil Aviation Authority and airport statistics, making it the 20th largest airport in the UK.

In October 2004, the airport was named as one of the top ten best airports in the world, by the Telegraph Travel Awards * [1].

In 2002 BA withdrew their routes from the airport which led to the new low-cost carrier bmibaby arriving at the airport bringing new routes along with it.

The volume of charter flights operated from the airport in recent years has steadily increased as have flights by low fare carriers bmibaby, Thomsonfly and Zoom.

Air Wales ceased operating in April 2006, with most routes transferring to other carriers, while in April Ryanair's once-daily Dublin service was replaced by three daily Aer Arann services.

In mid 2006, work began on upgrading the airport terminal, apron and ATC to provide additional capacity. The airport was used by 1.9 million passengers in 2005 and is increasing by 13 per cent for the year to date.

This history article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Cardiff Airport".