| Newcastle
Airport Parking - Airport History
Please find below a brief history of Newcastle Airport
which we hope that you will find useful.
Newcastle Airport is a major success story with a
growing number of scheduled and holiday charter flights to
domestic and worldwide destinations.
On the 26th July 1935 Newcastle Airport started life
with a grass runway, a club house, a hangar, workshops, an
ambulance room, a hose for petrol and a garage. The first
scheduled service flew to Croydon and Perth, Scotland. Both
operated by North Eastern Airways using Rapide and 8-seater
Airspeed Envoy aircraft. It had its first appointed
Airport manager in 1952, Jim Denyer's number-one aim was to
put Newcastle on the map. By mid-1954 scheduled services
totalled some 35 per week, but it was the 1960's when people
were heading off by air on sunshine holidays that brought
the boom in passenger numbers. The Airport was now carving
out a major role in encouraging business and development in
the North East of England.
- Number of passengers: 3 million
- Number of terminals: 1
- Number of runways: 1
- Number of destinations: Over 70
In April 1963 the leading local authorities in the region
came together to form the North East Regional Airport Committee.
They appointed a firm of consulting engineers to draw up development
plans and 18 months later work began. A new runway and apron
was developed, regraded, strengthened and extended to its
present length of 2332 metres.
By the mid 70's however the airport terminal building was
now full to capacity and in 1978, the Government, in its White
Paper on Airports Policy, designated Newcastle Airport
as a Category B regional airport. Extension plans were put
into action and building work started in July 1980 including
proper parking space. By the time Jim Denyer retired in 1989,
1.6 million passengers passed through Newcastle Airport.
Such success required an additional 2400 surface-level car-parking
spaces and the extended and improved terminal building which
was opened on the 26th May 1994 by the Princess Royal.
Passenger numbers continued to grow and in October 2000, a major
extension to the terminal and car parking was officially opened
by Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister and on 4th May 2001 a further
major step for the development of Newcastle Airport was
taken by the 7 local authority shareholders when 49% of the
shares in the Airport Company were sold to Copenhagen Airport,
thus ensuring a truly international Newcastle Airport.
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