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.

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 London service began to Nutts Corner, operated by Railway Air Services. The flight left from Croydon and went via Birmingham and Manchester to Belfast.
• 1939-45: During the second World War, Aldergrove remained an RAF base, particularly for the Coastal Command.
• 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: HM 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.

Key facts

• Serving over 3.7 million passengers a year, Belfast International Airport is the principal gateway to north of Ireland.
• It is the closest all-weather airport in Europe to the USA, and is ideally located for the rapid turnaround and repositioning of the transatlantic flights.
• The airport operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and is not subject to noise abatement procedures, significant environmental constraints or airspace limitations.
• Most techically advanced airport in Ireland - Two long runways with ILS Cat 111b equipment, offer wide-body capacity.
• Fifth largest regional air cargo centre in the UK.
• Full range of warehouse and distribution centre.
• Extensive ancillary services on site including executive air charter, air taxi, air ambulance, helicopter training and hire.

Airlines and destinations

The following scheduled airlines use Belfast International Airport (at January 2005):

• bmibaby to Birmingham, Cardiff, Durham Tees Valley (Teeside), Manchester and Nottingham (East Midlands))
• Eastern Airways to Aberdeen
• easyJet to Alicante, Amsterdam, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, London Gatwick, London Luton, London Stansted, Malaga, Newcastle, Nice, Paris (Charles de Gaulle) (services to Berlin (Schoenefeld), Geneva, Inverness, Palma and Rome (Ciampino) due to start in July 2005)
• Jet2.com to Barcelona, Leeds/Bradford and Prague (services to Cork and Bournemouth due to start in March 2005)

The following scheduled airlines are due to commence services in 2005:

• BWIA West Indies Airways to Barbados (from March 2005)
• Continental Airlines to New York (Newark) (from May 2005)
• EUjet to Kent International (Manston) (from April 2005)