Cardiff Airport

Cardiff Airport Maes Awyr Caerdydd
Characteristics
ICAO code	EGFF
IATA code	CWL
Coordinates	51 ° 23 '48 "  N , 3 ° 20' 36"  W Coordinates: 51 ° 23 '48 "  N , 3 ° 20' 36"  W.
Height above MSL	67 m (220  ft )
Transport links
Distance from the city center	12 miles southwest of Cardiff
Street	20 km to the
Basic data
opening	1952 (civil)
operator	Cardiff International Airport Ltd.
Passengers	1,019,545 (2014)
Flight movements	14,228 (2014)
Start-and runway
12/30	2353 m × 46 m asphalt

The Cardiff Airport ( Welsh Maes Awyr Caerdydd , originally Rhoose Airport ) is the international airport of the Welsh capital Cardiff , and also the largest airport in Wales.

history

The site of today's Cardiff Airport was opened on April 7, 1942 by the Royal Air Force under the name RAF Rhoose as a makeshift airfield and training center. After the end of the Second World War , the airfield was closed.

At the beginning of the 1950s, the capacities of Cardiffer Airport Pengam Moors were no longer sufficient to meet the increased traffic demand. Because an expansion of the existing airport was not possible due to its proximity to the city and for cost reasons, the new Rhoose Airport was built on the fallow site of the former RAF airfield . The opening took place in October 1952. On April 1, 1954, the old Pengam Moors Airport was closed.

In the mid-1960s, the airport, now renamed Glamorgan Airport , was expanded for the first time. At the same time, Cambrian Airways, based in Cardiff, set up extensive on-site shipyard facilities, in which, from 1970, aircraft from British European Airways and Northeast Airlines were also serviced. The British Airways took over this plant in April 1976 and uses it since then as a maintenance center.

For some years now, Cardiff Airport has also been increasingly used as an aircraft graveyard , where aircraft are parked during temporary shutdowns, or else cannibalized and recycled.

Airlines and Destinations

Cambrian Air Services , previously based in Pengam Moors, was the first scheduled airline to use the new airport as its home base from 1954. The company went into 1976 in British Airways . Other companies based at Cardiff Airport included the charter airlines Airways International Cymru and Inter European Airways .

In addition to connections to destinations within the United Kingdom and some European city destinations, Cardiff mainly has routes to holiday destinations in the Mediterranean region such as Palma and Antalya . Long-haul flights are currently not offered, but Qatar Airways has announced that it will fly to Cardiff from 2018.

The only German destination from 2010 was Munich , which was served by bmibaby . However, this connection was suspended even before the company's base in Cardiff closed in the fall of 2011.

Web links

Commons : Cardiff Airport  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website of Cardiff Airport (in English)
  • Web presence in Welsh

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Recent airport passenger figures