Lydd Airport

Lydd Airport is located 1.2 NM northeast of the town of Lydd and 12 NM south of Ashford in the District of Shepway within Kent, England. It is also known as London Ashford Airport, which officially only refers to its operator.

Lydd Airport has a CAA Ordinary Licence (Number P858) that allows flights for the public transport of passengers or for flying instruction as authorised by the licensee (London Ashford Airport Limited).

Lydd Air is based at the airport, offering regular flights to Le Touquet in northern France.

History
Lydd Airport was the first airport built in the UK after the Second World War, in 1956. It was used initially for air ferry services, and was known as Lydd Ferryfield. The airlines operating at that time included Silver City Airways (operating Douglas Dakotas) and British United Air Ferries (BUAF) – later becoming British United Airways, (BUA) – which flew Bristol Freighters, Superfreighters and Aviation Traders Carvair aircraft, the latter three types being used for transporting cars and their occupants across the English Channel. One common destination was Le Touquet.

During the 1980s the airport was bought by Hards Travel from Solihull, who used the airport (along with Coventry Airport) as its base for its holiday operations to Spain, Italy and Austria, using Dart Herald and Viscount aircraft flying to Beauvais in France, where customers were transferred to coaches for the remainder of the journey. During this time Hards operated 14 flights a day from the airport, and used the large fields surrounding the airport for car parking. The main brand Hards traded under was Summer-Plan, and in the winter Ski-Plan, as well as HTS Holidays.

In July 2011 CityJet conducted flight tests with the Avro RJ and Fokker 50 to see if the runway needs to be extended for them to begin operating flights. The managing director of the airport has said that the planned terminal will be able to take 500,000 passengers per year, the majority of which would be taken away from London Gatwick.

As of August 2011 Bin Air are operating nightly chartered freight services to Stuttgart using a Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner.

Accidents and incidents

 * On 15 January 1958, de Havilland Dove G-AOCE of Channel Airways crashed at Dungeness whilst attempting to land at Ferryfield. The accident was due to a double engine failure caused by mismanagement of the aircraft's fuel system by the pilot. All seven people on board survived.
 * On 17 August 1978, Douglas C-47B G-AMSM of Skyways Cargo Airline was damaged beyond economic repair in a take-off accident.