Edinburgh

Opened in 1915 as a grass strip west of Edinburgh for the Royal Flying Corps, it became RAF Turnhouse when the RFC merged with the Royal Naval Air Service to become the RAF on 1 Apr 1918.

Concrete runways were laid in the late 1930s as part of the RAF Expansion Programme and it was a busy base during WWII, especially during the Battle of Britain when raids on Edinburgh and Leith were launched by the Luftwaffe, from Norway and for FAA Air Groups whose carriers were in the nearby Firth of Forth.

By 1947, BEA operated a passenger service to London and although the RAF was still present, post war development was dominated by civilian, mainly commercial, aviation. The British Airports Authority took over the site in 1971 and added a new runway and made other improvements; these were formally opened by HM the Queen during her Silver Jubilee year in 1977. The RAF finally withdrew in 1996 and its buildings were quickly incorporated into a new cargo centre.

The past links with the RAF have not been completely forgotten; a full scale model of a Spitfire, marked as L1067/XT-D is mounted on a roundabout on the approach road to the passenger terminal.

Following a critical Competition Commission report for the UK Government, BAA was encouraged to divest itself of Edinburgh Airport. It achieved this in Apr 2012, with a sale to Global Infrastructure Partners (which also owned London City airport).