page_title: Cardiff Airport
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Cardiff Airport / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Concorde outside BA maintenance Hangar, Cardiff International airport.
context_page_description: Cardiff Airport is the busiest airport in Wales. It has been under the ownership of the Welsh Government since March 2013, operating at an arm's length as a commercial business. Passenger numbers were 1.581 million in 2018 and are increasing year-on-year. Cardiff Airport is located near the village of Rhoose in the Vale of Glamorgan.
context_section_description: In the early 1940s, the Air Ministry requisitioned land in the rural Vale of Glamorgan to set up a wartime satellite aerodrome and training base, named RAF Rhoose, for Royal Air Force (RAF) Spitfire pilots. Construction started in 1941, and the airfield officially began life on 7 April 1942 when it was taken over by No 53 Operational Training Unit. After WW2 the airfield fell into disuse and was abandoned.
  The man who decided Rhoose could be the site of a new airport was Lord Ogmore (previously David Rees-Williams), a Bridgend-born solicitor who had served as a lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Artillery during WW2 and who was elected MP for Croydon South in 1945. In 1951 Ogmore was briefly Minister of Civil Aviation, and identified what he called a "great need for a commercial airport of international standards" in South Wales. He later told the House of Lords "a decision had to be taken whether to do nothing at all (which was the desire of some) or whether Pengam Moors, the existing airport for Cardiff, should be improved at a cost of some millions of pounds, involving the alteration of the course of the Rumney River or, thirdly, whether an entirely new airport should be constructed or acquired in the vicinity of the capital of Wales."
  Lord Ogmore thought diverting the river at Pengam would be a problem, and feared that the tall chimney stacks of the nearby East Moors Steelworks could pose a safety hazard to aircraft. The Welsh Civil Aviation Consultative Committee then proposed that he should look at the "abandoned Royal Air Force airfield at Rhoose" as a possible alternative. On inspecting it, Ogmore found it "in a poor condition, with a large number of bombs stacked on the runways, and buildings in an extreme state of dilapidation". However he considered Rhoose could be suitable for civil aviation "if the necessary money and time were spent upon it". The Government accepted his proposal, and the Ministry of Aviation promptly began converting the abandoned airfield into a civilian airport. In October 1952 the new Rhoose Airport was opened by Rees-Williams's successor as Minister of Aviation Alan Lennox-Boyd.
caption: Concorde outside British Airways Maintenance Cardiff (January 2002)
exif: {}