Birmingham Airport : handbook & guide : Airport Committee; Birmingham Corporation : nd [c.1960]

The c.1960 handbook issued by the Airport Committee of the Corporation of the City of Birmingham and likely published to mark the final return of Elmdon Airport to the Council's control on 1 April 1960 from the Ministry of Aviation; the airport had been requisitioned upon the outbreak of war in 1939 only a few months after the opening of the City's airport.

 

The City's Airport Committe had come into being in 1934 and developed a scheme for a civil airport on a site at Elmdon, on the eastern fringe of the city on the Coventry Road. On 1 May 1939 the terminal buildings and runways came into use and it was official opened on 8 July when the Duchess of Kent 'cut the ribbon'. The design and architecture of the terminal build was the work of Norman and Dawbarn.

 

By 16 September 1939 the airport came under the control of the Royal Air Force. After the cessation of hostilities the City Council lobbied for the return of the airport but it passed tot he direct control of the Ministry of Civil Aviation and in 1947 it was included in a list of airfields that were to remain under state control; it had been opened to civil aviation again on 8 July 1946 but there were no scheduled flights. It was to be 1949 before the first scheduled services began, to Paris, followed by an Aer Lingus service to Dublin in 1949. The tempo picked up in 1950 (BEA to the Channel Islands and N. Ireland) and in 1951 the list had grown to include Dinard in France.

 

The book includes many adverts for travel and aviation related services as well as the City Council's aspirations for the future that included a new continental terminal and extensions to the existing domestic terminal. In 1974 control passed, unusually, to the new Metropolitan County Council of the West Midlands and was later part privatised - the various local Metropoliatn Borough Councils still being minority shareholders.

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