UK airports in 1961

[TheLocalYokel]

I was looking through some CAA historic passenger stats and found these airport annual passenger totals for 1961 - the furthest back I can find such CAA stats. The 25 busiest airports that year were:

Heathrow 6,060,245

Manchester 860,006

Gatwick 803,521

Glasgow 741,394

Belfast Int 504,814

Southend 488,383

Isle of Man 307,410

Birmingham 301,739

Edinburgh 259,716

Lydd 254,954

Liverpool 237,363

Bournemouth 202,839

Prestwick 198,795

Newcastle 149,336

Blackpool 130,954

Ashford 111,474

Leeds-Bradford 105,377

Stansted 90,611

Cardiff (shown as Glamorgan Airport) 68,621

Bristol 58,502

Aberdeen 49,261

Inverness 31,356

Kirkwall 30,182

Portsmouth 28,343

Isles of Scilly 27,084

In total 12,213,545 passengers used UK airports in 1961 with a further 1,051,696 using the Channel Islands airports, with Jersey the busiest with 782,379 passengers which reflects how popular these island were with holidaymakers in that era.

Airports such as East Midlands, Exeter, Belfast City, Durham Tees Valley/Teesside were not open then and Luton only handled 8,305 passengers in 1961.

 

[User0001]

Crazy to think that in 2013 Manchester carried more than double in 1 month than it did in the whole of 1961!

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Crazy to think that in 2013 Manchester carried more than double in 1 month than it did in the whole of 1961!

It certainly is and similar scenarios will apply to other airports. MAN was busier than Gatwick then in terms of terminal passengers.

It shows how difficult it is for anyone to plan long term in the aviation business, especially around the smaller regional airports.

Southend was the country's sixth busiest airport that year and airports such as Lydd and Ashford were in the UK's top 20 list, with Bournemouth, not Southampton, the main airport for that part of the south coast and with Portsmouth the second busiest for the area.

Who in 1961 could have got anywhere near accurately predicting the country's aviation map for 2014? I wonder what the scene will be like 50 years from now. The one certainty is that I shan't be around to find out.

 

[Aviador]

Interesting to say the least especially when my local airport is ranked in about the same position now as it was back in 1961. I guess the big shockers are the Isle of Man, Lydd and Southend which were all high up the ranking back then compared to now. Today's rankings are largely driven by population centres. This also highlights under achieving airports such as Leeds Bradford and Birmingham on the other hand airports such as Stansted and Bristol have made significant gains.

If it makes you feel any better, I probably wont be around in 50 years either.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

If it makes you feel any better, I probably wont be around in 50 years either.

What? A young man like you. Of course you will. :rockon:

You can come on here in 2064 and compare the list then with 2014's.