Bristol Airport Information

In 1927 a group of business men raised £6,000 through supscriptions to open a flying club at Filton Aerodrome, which later became the birthplace of Concorde.

After much interest in the project, these business men decided to develop a fully-fledged airport for Bristol. An area of farm land at Whitchurch was brought, and this was developed into the new airport was opened in May 1930 by HRH Prince George. At this point this was only the third civil airport in the country and was well used by Winston Churchill and Amy Johnson amongst other statesmen, film stars and spies.

The airport was de-requisitioned in 1956 and the Airport Commission purchased a site Lulsgate Bottom for £55,000. The new airport, which had been used as an RAF base for the previous 10 years was opened by The Duchess of Kent in 1957.

In 1989 record passenger numbers passed through Bristol Airport with a 31% increase, 34,345 passengers used Bristol airport. Following on from this several operators increased their flight schedules, including Aer lingus, Lufthansa anf NLM. In November Brymon Airways commenced their three-times a day flight to Glasgow and daily flight to Edinburgh.

March 1997 saw the re-lauch of Bristol Airport to Bristol International. Following this move, First Group brought 51% of the airport from Bristol City Council in December. A new terminal opened in 2000 and also started it's first direct trans-atlantic flights in years by operating to Toronto with Royal Airlines.

In February 2002 Bristol International was officially the fastest growing airport in the UK, with a year on year passenger increase of 44.5%.