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RAF Northolt
Station badge
Active	May 1915 (as a RFC base) – Present
Country	United Kingdom
Branch	Royal Air Force
Role	Communications flying
Based in	Ruislip, England
Motto	Alit Portare Aut Pugnare Prompti (Latin: Ready to Carry or to Fight)

RAF Northolt (IATA: NHT, ICAO: EGWU) is a Royal Air Force station in the London Borough of Hillingdon, in North West Greater London, England. Approximately 10 kilometres (6 miles) north of London Heathrow Airport, it also handles a large number of civilian flights.

RAF Northolt is actually situated in neighbouring Ruislip; most early RAF airfields were named after the nearest railway station, in this case Northolt Junction which is now called South Ruislip.

Opened in May 1915 for aircraft of the Royal Flying Corps, it was an active base for RAF and Polish Air Force squadrons during World War II, became a significant civilian airport soon afterwards, and subsequently reverted to military use upon the opening of Heathrow. Communications aircraft of the Royal Canadian Air Force, the United States Air Forces in Europe, the United States Navy, and the Armée de l'Air were based there in the 1950–1980 period. Today, it is an important RAF airfield and the home of 32 (The Royal) Squadron. Since about 1980 movements of privately-owned aircraft, mainly corporate jets, have outnumbered military aircraft.

When Fairey Aviation had a factory in Hayes, Hillingdon, some of the company's products – such as the Lysander monoplane – flew first from Northolt Aerodrome.

The body of Diana, Princess of Wales was flown into RAF Northolt several hours after her death in a Paris car crash on 31 August 1997.

A memorial to Polish airmen who lost their lives in the Second World War can be seen near the southeastern corner of the airfield; its presence is remembered by the name – "Polish War Memorial" – of the adjacent junction on Western Avenue.

The urban setting of the airfield came to prominence in August 1996, when a Spanish Learjet 25 overran runway 25 to collide with a van heading eastward on Western Avenue; the aircraft was carrying an actress needing to reach Pinewood Studios, in Buckinghamshire. Presumably because of its proximity to Pinewood, the airfield has been used to represent several more-exotic locations in feature films, such as in the pre-title sequence of the James Bond film Octopussy, in which it represented a Cuban-style airfield. Media attention was also high when a seriously ill fugitive, Ronald Biggs, was flown here and arrested, and when the body of Diana, Princess of Wales, was flown here from Villacoublay airfield, in Paris, France, after her death in that city.

RAF Northolt is operationally constrained by its proximity to the much larger civilian airport at Heathrow. On October 25 1960, a Pan American Boeing 707, heading for Heathrow, mistakenly landed at Northolt with 41 passengers on board.^[1][2]

In days before such navigational aides as instrument landing system (ILS) and the global positioning system (GPS), the letters NO (for Northolt) and LH (for Heathrow) were painted on two gasometers situated on the approach to each airfield, one at Southall for the approach into Heathrow and one at South Harrow for the approach to Northolt in an effort to prevent recurrence of such errors.

After some 30 years of protracted consideration, an ILS was eventually fitted to Northolt's runway 25, and aggregate-filled safety pits were installed at each end of that runway to protect road users in the event of another bizjet's or military transport's failure to stop or ascend before the runway's end.

Currently being extensively redeveloped under Project MoDEL, which also closes RAF Bentley Priory and RAF Uxbridge.

• List of RAF stations

• United Kingdom AIP
• Bruce Barrymore Halpenny Action Stations: Military Airfields of Greater London v. 8 (ISBN 978-0850595857)
• Bruce Barrymore Halpenny Fighter Pilots in World War II: True Stories of Frontline Air Combat (ISBN 978-1844150656)
• Bruce Barrymore Halpenny Fight for the Sky: Stories of Wartime Fighter Pilots (ISBN 978-0850597493)

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• RAF Northolt - official site