Blackpool International Airport Closes

A sad loss for Blackpool as unprofitable airport to closes tonight at 18:00. Only 12 passengers on the final 17:00 flight to the Isle of Man.

The airport site's first aviation use was in October 1909, when the UK's first official public Flying Meeting was held on a specially laid out site at Squires Gate, followed by another in 1910. By 1911 the site had become a racecourse and it was used as a military hospital during the First World War and until 1924. Flights from the site resumed in the early 1930s. Small UK airlines used the airfield during the mid-1930s. Railway Air Services commenced schedules to Blackpool from 15 April 1935, linking the airport with the Isle of Man, Manchester and Liverpool. Connections could be made at the two cities to London and the south and west of England.

Balfour Beatty, which bought the airport for £14m in 2008, put it back on the market in August, saying losses of £1.5m were unsustainable. The firm warned that if a decent offer wasn’t forthcoming by 7 October then it was curtains for Blackpool. Sadly for the airport’s 110 staff, as well as the hundreds more indirectly employed, no one wanted to buy an unprofitable old wartime relic built to accommodate 1.5m passengers each year which only attracted 235,000 in 2013.