Home > Belfast International Airport

Belfast International Airport is an airport in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom also known as Aldergrove, the village to the south west of the site. The airport has the IATA Airport Code BFS. RAF Aldergrove is adjacent to the airport, while the base has its own separate facilites the airport shares the runways.

1 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 LondonLondon is the capital of the United Kingdom and of England, and with over seven million inhabitants in the Greater London area, is the second-most populous conurbation in Europe (after Moscow). From being Londinium the capital of the Roman province of Bri service began to Nutts Corner, operated by Railway Air Services. The flight left from Croydon and went via BirminghamThis article is about Birmingham in England. See also Birmingham, Alabama or other places called Birmingham. Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. Being the country's second largest city, it is usually considered B and ManchesterThis article is about the city in England. For alternative meanings, see Manchester (disambiguation). Manchester is a city in North West England, which in 2002 had a population of approximately 422,302. The city is situated in the centre of the large metr to Belfast.
• 1939-45: During the second World War, Aldergrove remained an RAF base, particularly for the Coastal CommandCoastal Command was an organization within the Royal Air Force tasked with protecting the United Kingdom from naval threats. More specifically it was founded with the idea of directly countering German U-boats by air. It was first formed just prior to WWI.
• 1946-63: Nutts Corner becomes the main civil airport of Northern Ireland.
• 26 Sept 1963: 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. 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
• September 11 2001: Transatlantic aircraft including a BA 747 are diverted to Aldergrove following the closure of United States airspace.
• 2005: Continental Airlines will begin direct flights from Aldergrove to Newark International Airport, New York. This is the first direct flight from Northern Ireland to the United States, passengers previously flying to Heathrow or Dublin Airport.