Humberside Airport is on the site of a 2nd World War airfield with aircraft based at the airfield including Lancaster Bombers. At the end of the war the airfield became farmland before the return of small scale flying in the 1960's. Operations included local air-taxi company, Humber Airways. The airport was developed and owned by Lindsey County Council and by 1974 the airfield had got a new passenger terminal, which received its first scheduled flight to Amsterdam a year later, operated by Air Anglia who opened an outstation at the airport. Other routes included Birmingham, Glasgow, Jersey, London Heathrow, Norwich and Teeside. 1974 also saw ownership pass to the new Humberside County Council.

The 1980's - Eastern Airways and DC-3's to Heathrow

In 1980, Air Anglia became part of Air UK who continued to serve Humberside. However they passed routes to Glasgow and London Heathrow over to a new airline, Eastern Airways. They were based at the airport and initially operated DC-3's (yes, there was a DC-3 scheduled flight to Heathrow in the early 1980's!!!) before using Shorts SD-330's. In 1982, Eastern merged with other regional airlines Genair and Casair. Humberside was the headquarters of the airline and a new route to London Gatwick was started. However, by June 1984, all flights had stopped and Air Ecosse and Air UK replaced the airline's Humberside routes with Air UK taking back the key route to London Heathrow.

After Eastern Airways, the services from the airport settled down a bit. Air Ecosse left and Air UK remained the main airline at the airport. 1987 saw flights started to Esbjerg by Cimber Air. These were later passed to Newair before stopping in the early 1990's. 1989 saw a newly airline was set up at the airport, Skyrover. They began flights to Dusseldorf. The summer service was a huge success but by winter, loads had decreased and the airline stopped flights.

The Early 1990's – Loss of Heathrow flights but an Air Hong Kong B747 visits!!!

The start of the decade saw a big blow to the airport as Air UK stopped its flights in March 1990 to London Heathrow due to high landing charges. This forced connecting passengers to use their route to KLM’s Amsterdam hub. This service was unaffected by the end of the Heathrow route, as were Air UK’s remaining domestic routes along the East Coast and to Jersey.

The runway was extended in 1992, leading to the start of charter flights to popular European holiday destinations. The first season of summer charter flights saw services to Palma and Tenerife with tour operators Airtours and Thomson. To mark the runway extension, an Air Hong Kong B747 visited the airport, Around this time the airport used to hold yearly airshows and there were numerous visits by Concorde.

The charter programme continued to grow over the next few years with some destinations more successful than others. Airlines involved in operating flights at the time included Air Malta, Airtours, Britannia and Monarch. Some of the destinations included Corfu, the Costa Brava, Cyprus, Izmir, Malta, Rhodes and Turkey as well as the slightly less exotic Alicante, Gran Canaria, Palma, Menorca and Tenerife. Looking back – how times have changed; quite a few of these routes no longer operate, such as the Costa Brava while others returned and went again, such as Rhodes. And sadly you won’t see Monarch or Air Malta on the airport apron on a regular basis any more.

In 1993, Birmingham European Airlines planned to start flights from Humberside to Belfast, Dublin and Glasgow. Sadly these flights, planned to operate with Jetstream 31’s, never happened.

EuroDirect, City Air Bus and Western Regional Airlines – Ambition but failure in regional routes

1994 saw another attempt to expand regional scheduled services from Humberside. EuroDirect Airlines started flights in August to Aberdeen (in competition with Air UK), Bournemouth, Brussels, Dublin and London Stansted using Jetstream 31 and ATP aircraft. Onward connections where available to Exeter and Paris CDG at Bournemouth and Hamburg at London Stansted.

By October changes were being made to the schedules. Bournemouth flights where reduced from twice to once daily and Dublin flights to weekends only while the route to Stansted was dropped completely. However non-stop flights to Paris CDG and Hamburg were introduced. A weekly Manchester flight was also operated as a positioning move. The routes to Aberdeen and Brussels continued as before.

December however saw yet more changes. Paris CDG, Bournemouth and Dublin saw their services axed while the Hamburg service never started. Flights to Aberdeen and Brussels, which appeared to do well continued until the airline stopped flights in early 1995. 

It only took a few weeks before the Brussels link was re-established. It was operated by EuroDirect Belgium. They had operated as an associated company of Euro Direct Airlines but had managed to resume flights. The route was operated in partnership with the Belgium national airline Sabena until it sadly ended in 1996.

With the end of Stansted flights in October 1994, the airport lost a key business route to London. However in November a new start up airline, City Air Bus started regular Dornier 228 flights to London City. Sadly this service too failed in early 1995, in the same week the airline had planned to start a new route to Cardiff.

So by the end of 1996 Air UK was the airport’s only scheduled airline and there was no airline operating to Brussels. However 1997 saw new hope as a new airline, Western Regional Airlines, planned to start flights from Humberside. The main and initial route was to be to Brussels. This would be complemented by Belfast, Copenhagen and at least one Danish Regional Airport. The plan was to use a Beechcraft 1900 aircraft but sadly flights never started.

While at the time there was much promise with expansion of charter flights and by scheduled airlines, the number of routes that ended up being axed did not help the airports reputation. And the suspension and later departure of the airport managing director, plus a debate over the airport’s future ownership did not help matters.

The Late 1990's - The end of Air UK, the rebirth of Eastern Airways, British Airways and flights to Florida

1996 saw the opening of a new helicopter terminal and upgrade and expansion of facilities in the main airport terminal including a new restaurant. The airport also saw its new owners become the four councils that form the old Humberside, although by 1999 only North Lincolnshire Council retained its shares; the other three local councils sold their shares to Manchester Airport.

1997 saw big changes to scheduled flights at Humberside. Air UK were taken over by their partner KLM. Flights to Amsterdam remained but domestic flights to Aberdeen (via Teeside) and Jersey were dropped. Initially British Regional Airlines, operating as British Airways, replaced Air UK on the Aberdeen route with a once daily non-stop service.

However, the demise of Air UK led to the set up of Eastern Airways (Version 2) during late 1997 at the airport to operate to Aberdeen on a non-stop basis initially with twice daily flights on weekdays. This higher frequency forced the pull out of British Airways. The airline is now one of the countries largest regional airlines and remains based at Humberside today. Further information is available elsewhere on the site.

A significant operation in 1997 was a series of two flights to Florida and one to the Dominican Republic for Thomson Holidays. Their in-house airline, Britannia operated the flights with a B767. They stopped at Shannon, Ireland on the outward leg. However, due to a change of policy, these special departure holidays where sadly stopped.

1999 saw a significant new service from Humberside. Gill Airways, a Newcastle based regional airline, operating under an Air France franchise, started flights to Paris CDG on the 4th May. During the year Gama Aviation converted a service on behalf of Bond Helicopters to Aberdeen from charter to scheduled status.

Furthermore 1999 saw a change in ownership of the airport. Until then it had been owned by the local council, which from 1974 to 1996 was Humberside County Council. However, upon the abolition of Humberside, the ownership of the airport was spilt among the four counties created to replace it; East Riding of Yorkshire, Hull, North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire. The councils, except North Lincolnshire were keen to cash in on their stake and sold it to Manchester Airport. Manchester Airport bought 82.7% of the airport – the remainder was retained by North Lincolnshire Council, the county the airport is in.

Changing Century - A focus on Charters and arrival of the Low Cost Airline

Unfortunately the new Paris flight didn’t last more than a year into the new century. The last flight was December 16th. The service had ended due to financial problems at Gill Airways and left passengers forced to use KLM's Amsterdam service for worldwide connections.

Also in 2000, Eastern Airways started a new Norwich to Glasgow service via Humberside. However this was not a success and was soon dropped. They later tried an Edinburgh flight in 2002. This started in the summer timetable but was unfortunately dropped by Christmas. Eastern Airways remain operating just the one route, to Aberdeen, from Humberside. However the Gama Aviation service on the route ended during the early 2000's.

Charter flights continued to grow around this time. Although Cosmos pulled out of the airport in the late 1990’s, the airport welcomed JMC (now Thomas Cook). Various tour operators added new routes including Lanzarote and Bodrum. The airport was one of the country’s fastest growing.

2003 brought the start of regular cargo flights to Humberside. Icelandair Cargo started flights from Keflavik to Humberside, carrying fish. Initially operating twice weekly, the flights increased to daily during some weeks. As well as using their own B757-200F's, Icelandair Cargo have used Bluebird Cargo 737F's and Aviapaslauga Tu-204C's on some flights since they started.

2004 saw the BBC expose security breaches at Humberside Airport, with a reporter able to gain access to the airfield. This brought unfortunate national publicity for the airport, and thankfully the security breaches have been dealt with now.

With the opened of a new airport at the former RAF Finningley site, and cutbacks at the airports main tour operator, Airtours, 2005 was bad year at Humberside. Instead of rising, like they had done for a number of years, passenger numbers fell. Thomson moved some charter flights to the new Doncaster airport and Airtours pulled others. Local Media expressed concern for the future of the airport.

However 2006 saw a come back and the first based charter aircraft at the airport. Excel Airways based a B737-800 at the airport for half the week in the summer season. Meanwhile the first regular intercontinental service started with a weekly charter flight to Monastir in Tunisia during the summer.

Another very significant development was a new service operated by Ryanair to Dublin. The service was Humberside first low cost flight and was operated daily by B737-800 aircraft.

And then it all went wrong (again)

In a flashback to the mid 1990’s when regional routes never stuck around for long, Excel Airways and Ryanair announced they were pulling out of Humberside. Excel Airways had planned to base an aircraft all week at Humberside for Summer 2007 but in Autumn 2006 announced they would not be returning to Humberside in 2007. The reason for this is not known for certain with rumours suggesting that it was either to do with a high number of bad weather diversions they had experienced in 2006 or as part of wider shake up of Excel Airways by its management.

Summer 2007 also saw the lost of the Monastir flight.

Ryanair left in October 2006 due to disappointing loads. Their Dublin route was attracting over 5000 passengers a month but on average this meant only half the seats on its B737-800 aircraft were full. This left Humberside with no low cost airline and once again only two scheduled routes – Aberdeen and Amsterdam – two routes which the airport has successfully managed to keep over the years when many others have come and gone.