Edinburgh Airport

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Edinburgh Airport

IATA: EDI - ICAO: EGPH
Summary
Airport type		Public
Operator		BAA
Serves		Edinburgh
Elevation AMSL		135 ft (41 m)
Coordinates		55°57′00″N, 003°22′21″W
Runways
Direction	Length		Surface
Direction	ft	m	Surface
06/24	8,399	2,560	Asphalt
12/30	5,899	1,798	Asphalt

Edinburgh Airport (IATA: EDI, ICAO: EGPH), (also called Turnhouse) located in Edinburgh, Scotland, is the eighth largest airport in the UK. It is located 8 statute miles (13 km) west of the city centre.

Edinburgh Airport is owned by BAA plc, the company which also owns London Heathrow, London Gatwick, London Stansted, Glasgow International, Aberdeen and Southampton airports.

The present terminal building, designed by Robert Matthew, was constructed in 1977 and has been upgraded in recent years, with new car parking facilities and an extended arrivals hall. A new control tower was completed in 2005.

1 History
2 Airlines and destinations
3 Future plans
4 Accidents
5 References
6 External links

[edit] History

Turnhouse Aerodrome was the furthest north British air defence base in World War I. The small base opened in 1915 and it was used to house the 603 City of Edinburgh Squadron, which consisted of DH 9As, Westland Wapitis, Hawker Harts and Hawker Hind light bombers. All the aircraft used a grass air strip.

In 1918 the Royal Air Force was formed and the airfield was named RAF Turnhouse and ownership transferred to the Ministry of Defence.

When World War II broke out fighter command took control over the airfield and a runway of 3,900ft was paved to handle the Vickers Supermarine Spitfire.

When the war ended the airfield still remained under military control, but by the late 1940s the first commercial services were launched. In 1947, British European Airways started a service between Edinburgh and London using Vickers Viscounts.

In 1952 the runway was extended to 6000ft to handle the Vampire FB5s. In 1956 a new passenger terminal was built to offer improved commercial service and five years later it was extended. The Ministry of Defence transferred ownership to the Ministry of Aviation in 1960 to offer improved commercial service to the airport. In 1971 the British Airports Authority took over control of the airport and immediately started to expand the airport by building a new runway and terminal.

Although the original runway 13/31 (which is now 12/30) served the airport well, its alignment led to the disadvantage of suffering from severe crosswinds, so movements were transferred to a new runway (07/25, which is has since become 06/24). This runway, completed in 1977 is 8399ft in length, and was able to take all modern airliners. A new terminal was built alongside the runway to cater for the additional traffic. The old terminal and hangars were converted into a cargo center.

The only international services from Edinburgh during the 1980s were to Amsterdam and Dublin, but in the following years links were opened to destinations in France and Germany. By the end of the decade BAA had been privatised and funds were used to extend the current terminal building and create parking aprons.

[edit] Airlines and destinations

Aer Arann (Cork, Galway)
Aer Lingus (Dublin)
Air France
- Air France operated by Cityjet (Paris-Charles de Gaulle)
Air Transat (Toronto-Pearson)
bmi (Brussels, Copenhagen, Jersey, Leeds/Bradford, London-Heathrow, Manchester)
- bmibaby (Birmingham, Cardiff, Nottingham/East Midlands)
British Airways (London-Gatwick, London-Heathrow)
- BA Connect (Birmingham, Bristol, Hamburg, London-City, Manchester, Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Southampton)
- British Airways operated by Loganair (Inverness, Isle of Man, Kirkwall, Lerwick, Shetland Sumburgh, Stornoway, Wick)
- British Airways operated by Sun Air (billund)
Centralwings (Gdansk, Katowice, Warsaw)
Czech Airlines (Prague [ends 7 January 2007])
Continental Airlines (Newark)
Delta Air Lines (Atlanta)
easyJet (Alicante, Amsterdam, Belfast, Bristol, Geneva, London-Gatwick, London-Stansted, London-Luton, Munich [starts 4 April 2007])
Finnair (Helsinki)
Flybe (Belfast City, Bergerac [starts 26 May 2007], Birmingham, Exeter, Jersey, Southampton, Newquay, Norwich)
Flyglobespan (Alicante, Arrecife, Barcelona, Chambery seasonal [starts December 23], Faro, Geneva [seasonal], Hamilton [starts May 5, 2007], Ibiza, Mahon, Málaga, Murcia, Nice, Palma de Mallorca, Prague, Pula, Rome-Fiumicino, Tenerife-South)
Germanwings (Cologne/Bonn)
Jet2.com (Murcia, Milan-Bergamo [starts April 5], Pisa, Prague [starts 5 February 2007])
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and KLM Cityhopper (Amsterdam)
Lufthansa (Frankfurt)
Ryanair (Dublin, Shannon)
Scandinavian Airlines System (Stockholm-Arlanda)
Sky Europe (Krakow)
Sterling Airlines (Copenhagen)
ScotAirways (London-City)
Widerøe (Bergen)

[edit] Future plans

There are plans to expand Edinburgh airport by adding a further runway, although this is unlikely to be required within the next 20 years. BAA has made provision in its Master Plan for the airport for an extension to the current runway 06/24, which would allow larger aircraft to serve longer haul destinations.

Owing to its east central location Edinburgh Airport is easily reached by the M9 and M90 motorways and is close to the Fife Circle and Edinburgh-Glasgow railway lines. In 2003 the Scottish Executive announced plans to build a direct rail link to Edinburgh Airport. More details can be found on the Edinburgh Airport Rail Link Project website. A proposed tram route is expected to connect to Edinburgh Airport when complete in 2009. Currently express bus services link the airport to Edinburgh City Centre[1] and Inverkeithing railway station in Fife[2].

The Airport is also lobbying the City of Edinburgh Council to construct an access road from the Gogar roundabout in an attempt to relieve congestion on the busy approach road. They are also urging the Scottish Executive to construct a direct link road from the M8 motorway.

An extension to the terminal opened in September 2006. This has added six gates on a new pier to the east of the current building. In the long term BAA projects that by 2030 Edinburgh Airport will be Scotland's busiest, handling 26 million passengers per year.

[edit] Accidents

On 27 February 2001, a Loganair Shorts 360(G-BNMT) operating a Royal Mail flight to Belfast, crashed into the Firth of Forth shortly after taking off from Edinburgh at 1730 GMT. Both crew members were killed, but there were no passengers on board. A fatal accident inquiry later blamed a build up of slush in the aircraft's engines for the crash. Protective covering had not been fitted to the engine intakes while the aircraft was parked for several hours in heavy snow at Edinburgh.