Belfast International Airport

Belfast International Airport is an airport in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. The airport has the IATA Airport Code BFS.

Timeline

• November 1917: Aldergrove selected to be the Royal Flying Corps training establishment during the First World War. With the end of the war, Aldergrove remained open for Royal Air Force aircraft and for the fledgling civil traffic to and from Northern Ireland.
• June 1921: King George V and Queen Mary visited Northern Ireland. Aircraft landed at Aldergrove with cameramen and reporters and returned to London with newsreel films and photographs of the event.
• May 1925: Northern Ireland's own Special Reserve unit No 502 (Ulster) Squadron RAF was formed at Aldergrove.
• 31 May 1933: Northern Ireland's first ever regular, sustained civil air service started. The route was Glasgow to Aldergrove and the flight was operated by Midland and Scottish Air Ferries.
• 1933-1934: Aldergrove became Northern Ireland's civil airport.
• 20 August 1934: Northern Ireland's first London service began to Nutts Corner, operated by Railway Air Services. The flight left from Croydon and went via Birmingham and Manchester to Belfast.
• 1939-45: During the second World War, Aldergrove remained an RAF base, particularly for the Coastal Command.
• 1946-63: The decision was taken to move civil flights back to Aldergrove because of less variable weather conditions than those at Nutts Corner. In recent years aircraft had been diverted from Nutts Corner to Aldergrove because of adverse weather conditions
• 26 Sept 1963: Operations were transferred from Nutts Corner to Aldergrove. The first passenger flight to land that day was a BEA Vickers Viscount from Manchester.
• 28 Oct 1963: HRH Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother reopened Aldergrove as a civil airport and inaugurated the present terminal building
• 4 January 1966: The start of the first regular jet service, by a British United BAC 1-11 to Gatwick
• 1969: Annual passenger numbers hit the 1 million mark

Key facts

• Serving over 3.7 million passengers a year, Belfast International Airport is the principal gateway to north of Ireland.
• It is the closest all-weather airport in Europe to the USA, and is ideally located for the rapid turnaround and repositioning of the transatlantic flights.
• The airport operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and is not subject to noise abatment procedures, significant environmental constraints or airspace limitations.
• Most techically advanced airport in Ireland - Two long runways with ILS Cat 111b equipment, offer wide-body capacity.
• Fifth largest regional air cargo centre in the UK.
• Full range of wharehouse and distribution centre.
• Extensive ancillary services on site including executive air charter, air taxi, air ambulance, helicopter training and hire.

Airlines and destinations

• bmibaby (Cardiff, East Midlands, Manchester, Teesside)
• Eastern Airways (Aberdeen)
• easyJet (Alicante, Amsterdam, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Newcastle, Paris, London Gatwick, London Luton, London Stansted, Nice, Malaga)
• Jet2.com (Leeds/Bradford, Prague, Barcelona)