Sheffield City Airport was a small international airport in Sheffield; it is now closed. It was in the Tinsley Park area of the city, near the M1 motorway and Sheffield Parkway, and opened in 1997. The airport's CAA licence was withdrawn on 21 April 2008 and it was officially closed on 30 April 2008, and the site is now part of the Advanced Manufacturing Park with various manufacturing businesses.

History

Planning

Although an early proposal was made in 1968 to build an airport in South Yorkshire on land near Todwick in Rotherham, the scheme came to nothing. Almost thirty years later, a consultant report suggested that Sheffield would benefit from a short-runway STOLPORT model similar to London City Airport. The main lack of an airport in Sheffield is due primarily to the fact there is only a limited area of flat land large enough for it. In fact the size of the airport which was eventually built was determined by this geographical factor, see topographical map of the Sheffield area. It is not coincidental that Sheffield is built on hills because the resultant rivers powered the development of its most famous industries, namely steel making and engineering.

Operations

The airport opened in 1997. Scheduled flights began on 16 February 1998. Airlines KLM uk, Sabena, British Airways and Aer Arann offered regular passenger services to Belfast, Amsterdam, Brussels, Dublin, Jersey and London. The Amsterdam service was described by KLM UK as the best start-up they had ever experienced. Passenger figures were:

Demise

Sheffield City opened just as the low-cost airline revolution began in the UK, a change that rapidly made the high-fare short-hop business flights model obsolete. Likewise the length of the runway limited the range of aircraft types that could use Sheffield. Most of the early low-cost airlines had planes that were unable to land at Sheffield. Nevertheless, Robin Hood Airport Doncaster Sheffield, which did have a larger runway, struggled to attract such airlines. By November 2001 the only remaining scheduled flights at the airport was the twice daily British Airways flight to Belfast City which later ceased in August 2002. Peel Airports, who were shortly to be opening Robin Hood Airport Doncaster Sheffield airport, purchased the site in 2002. By then, the airport terminal interior had already been converted to office accommodation. Fire and rescue cover and air traffic control were both reduced along with the withdrawal of published procedures for instrument approaches. A base for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance opened at the airport on 25 October 2007.

Closure and redevelopment

Controversy surrounds whether Peel Airports had any incentive to promote the airport. The original lease between the Sheffield Development Corporation and Tinsley Park Ltd included a reversionary clause permitting the buyback of 80 acre of land for £1, if it could be shown that - after 10 years of opening - the airport was not financially viable. Peel's proposal to turn the airport into Sheffield Business Park was advertising land at up to £220 per square foot. The estimated profit on the site was more than £1,000,000. On 22 November 2012, the South and East Yorkshire Branch of the Federation of Small Businesses launched a campaign and petition against the redevelopment of the airport site. They wanted the airport's potential to be reassessed. Three weeks later, a mystery bidder made a bid to Sheffield City Council to reopen the airport. However, nothing came of this and construction work began in 2014. The heliport remained in operation after closure for use by the South Yorkshire Police air support unit and the Yorkshire Air Ambulance. The air ambulance base was closed in 2010 and moved to Bagby airfield near Thirsk. The police helicopter base closed by the National Police Air Service on 1 February 2016 bringing an end to aviation activity at the site. The former terminal building and control tower have since been converted into office accommodation. The former Airport apron is now used as a car park. The ICAO identifier EGSY was reassigned to MOD St Athan from 1 April 2019.

Accidents and incidents