Renfrew Airport

Renfrew Airport was the domestic airport serving the city of Glasgow until it was decommissioned in 1966.

It was located in the Newmains area of Renfrew, approximately 2 kilometres east of Abbotsinch Airfield which would eventually replace it. It consisted of a main terminal building and ancillary buildings, and a main runway which ran west south-west of the terminal.

Already in existence as a military facility during the First World War, it first handled scheduled flights in 1933 with the first regular destination being Campbeltown. In World War II it served as RAF Renfrew.

Despite the construction of a new terminal building (with a parabola arch) in 1954, it became evident that the airport was unable to cope with the increasing demands for domestic air travel in the 1960s. The final departure took place on 2 May 1966 – its destination being the new Glasgow Airport a few hundred metres away.

The site is now occupied by a Tesco supermarket and the M8 motorway; this straight and level section of motorway occupies the site of the runway.[1] Opened in March 1968, the M8 connected the new Glasgow Airport to Bishopton in the west and Glasgow city centre (via Hillington) in the east. The entire airport was demolished in 1978. Arkleston Primary School (1972) and a Tesco superstore (1980) were built on the former terminal site, and the whole of the surrounding area is now covered with housing.

The only trace left of the airport is the Flying Scotsman pub which was the Hertz car rental building, opposite the terminal building.

Services

The airport was served by airlines such as Scottish Airlines, Railway Air Services and British European Airways, for destinations in Scotland and London.[2]

Icelandair offered flights to Iceland and a number of destinations in Europe.[3] Other airlines offering international flights were Dan-Air, Sabena and LOT.

Statistics

The airport handled 138,146 passengers in its first year of operations. By the end of the decade, the airport was handling more than half a million passengers annually; one million passengers passed through the airport for the first time in the year 1964. In the year of the airport's closure, it handled 1.4 million passengers.[4]

Year Number Of Passengers[5] % Change
1950138,146
1951139,599 1
1952156,916 12.4
1953210,023 33.8
1954258,481 23.1
1955305,574 18.2
1956373,948 22.4
1957436,561 16.7
1958443,481 1.6
1959528,682 19.2
1960652,180 23.4
1961741,398 13.7
1962854,988 15.3
1963996,264 16.5
19641,150,506 15.8
19651,240,066 7.8
19661,406,879 13.5

In fiction

The airport features briefly in the second novel of a space opera series by Angus MacVicar, Return to the Lost Planet. One of the characters is about to fly back from Scotland to Berlin, but the hero and his companion join him at the last minute on the bus from St. Enoch, Glasgow, to the airport, and persuade him to stay and help them.

References
Notes
  1. Smith, Renfrew
  2. http://glasgowairport.0catch.com/HTMS/renfrew.htm
  3. McCloskey, Keith. Glasgow's Airports: Renfrew and Abbotsinch. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press Ltd., 2009.
  4. McCloskey, Keith. Glasgow's Airports: Renfrew and Abbotsinch. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press Ltd., 2009
  5. McCloskey, Keith. Glasgow's Airports: Renfrew and Abbotsinch. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press Ltd., 2009
Bibliography
  • McCloskey, Keith. Glasgow's Airports: Renfrew and Abbotsinch. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press Ltd., 2009. ISBN 978-0-7524-5077-3.
  • McCloskey, Keith. From the Blitz to University Flying: Essays on Glasgow's Aviation History. Published on Amazon., 2019. ISBN 978 1706079569.
  • Smith, David J. Action Stations, Volume 7: Military airfields of Scotland, the North-East and Northern Ireland. Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK: Patrick Stephens Ltd., 1983 ISBN 0-85059-563-0.

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