A Brief History

Like many of the airports in the UK, Cardiff started life as an RAF aerodrome. Following the war the commercial potential of the runway was recognised in the early 1950s with Aer Lingus starting a service to Dublin. A new terminal building followed, along with flights to France, Belfast and Cork. A massive increase in holiday charter business resulted in passengers exceeding 100,000 in 1962.

The 80s saw development of transatlantic links to Florida and Canada and now Cardiff Airport attracts over two million passengers a year making it the 20th largest airport in the UK.

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

Traffic

In mid 2006, work began on upgrading the airport terminal, apron and Air Traffic Control 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.

It is anticipated that the investment will attract up to 4.5m passengers by 2015 - an increase of 100% - according to the airport's published response to a UK Government White paper on the future of commercial aviation throughout the United Kingdom.