London Heathrow Airport History
Heathrow Airport’s humble beginnings began in 1930 when Richard Fairey paid £15,000 for a 150-acre plot at Heathrow to test and build aircraft. The government requisitioned the land during World War II to build RAF Heston and an RAF control tower was constructed. In 1946 it was handed over to the Air Ministry and it became London’s new civil airport. The first flight to take off from the grass was the Lancaster bomber. The early terminals were very primitive and passengers had to walk to the aircraft over muddy fields. In its first operational year 63,000 passengers travelled through the airport and in 1951 Frederick Gibberd the British architect was appointed to design the main buildings on the site.
In 1969 Terminal 1 opened, and at that time five million passengers were passing through the airport annually. When Concorde arrived in the 1970′s, 27 million passengers were passing through Heathrow Airport annually, and as the need for more flights increased, Terminal 4 opened for business in 1986. When Heathrow celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2006 Heathrow had handled around 14 million flights.
The process of building a third runway began in 2007, under much controversy, and the project was finally cancelled by the Cameron government in May 2010. In March 2008 the slick and modern Terminal 5 opened its doors to passengers. The most popular destination in terms of passengers is New York, with over 3.7 million travellers a year. Based 12 miles from Central London Heathrow Airport has 2 parallel runways and 5 operational terminals.
In 2011 Heathrow Airport is owned and operated by BAA. London Heathrow airport is undoubtably the largest airport in the UK, and in terms of total passenger traffic is the fourth busiest airport in the World. Virgin Atlantic has its base at Heathrow Airport and it is the main hub for British Airways and BMI. Heathrow Airport fly to 170 destinations worldwide and is used by over 90 airlines and the airport has 67 million passengers annually. An astonishing 1.3 million tons of cargo are also carried each year.
Heathrow Airport has Chaplains for all the major world religions and it has a multi-faith prayer and counselling room in each of the terminals. Heathrow also services itself all the major TV stations and newspapers and has its own press corps with one TV crew and six photographers.
iChauffeur are positioned under the flightpath of Heathrow Airport and would be delighted to offer you a Free Quotation for our Heathrow Chauffeur service, which includes a meet and greet arrival at the airport in West London.
