Southampton Airport

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Southampton Airport
IATA: SOU – ICAO: EGHI
Summary
Airport type Public
Owner BAA
Operator Southampton International Airport Ltd.
Serves Southampton
Elevation AMSL 44 ft / 13 m
Coordinates 50°57′01″N 001°21′24″W / 50.95028, -1.35667
Website www.southamptonairport.com
Runways
Direction Length Surface
m ft
02/20 1,723 5,653 Asphalt
Source: United Kingdom AIP [1]

Southampton Airport (IATA: SOU, ICAO: EGHI) is the 20th largest airport in the UK, located in Eastleigh near Southampton. Southampton Airport is owned by BAA Limited (BAA), which owns several other airports including the three busiest airports serving London. Southampton airport handled in excess of 1.9 million passengers during 2006.[2]

Southampton International Airport has a CAA Public Use Aerodrome Licence (Number P690) that allows flights for the public transport of passengers or for flying instruction.

Contents

Southampton Airport control tower
Southampton Airport control tower

The airport's runway is reputed to be built over the remains of a Roman villa.[3]

According to local history author John Edgar Mann's Book of the Stonehams the site's connection with aviation can be traced back to 1910 when pioneer pilot Eric Moon used the meadows belonging to North Stoneham Farm as a take-off and landing spot for his monoplane, Moonbeam Mk II.

During the First World War, when forces from the United States Navy arrived in 1917, work on the building of hangars began. At the peak of the American presence, some 4,000 officers and men were billeted in tents and huts along the adjacent London to Southampton railway line.

After that war, the site became a transit camp for refugees, mainly Russian, who were anxious to sail to America from the port of Southampton. The shipping companies Cunard and White Star Line (the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company) together with the Canadian Pacific Railway formed the "Atlantic Park Hostel Company" to house them temporarily. In 1921 the hangars were converted into dormitories, kitchens and dining rooms.

The hostel was intended to be a short-term clearing house for those trans-migrants changing ships, but following changes to US immigration law which restricted entry to the United States under national origins quotas, some residents were forced to stay much longer. In 1924 about 980 Ukrainian Jewish would-be emigrants were cared for at the hostel. Some of them were still there seven years later, stranded between the US and UK which would not accept them, and unable to return the countries they had fled. Atlantic Park had a school, library, and synagogue while the refugees formed football teams that played local sides and took part in local events, such as Eastleigh carnival.

At the height of its use 20,000 passed through Atlantic Park in 1928 but then figures started to fall away, leading to the closure of the hostel in 1931. In 1932 Southampton Corporation purchased the site and it became "Southampton Municipal Airport". The airport was acquired from the Fleet Air Arm in 1936 by the Royal Air Force and was briefly known as RAF Eastleigh before it became RAF Southampton. It eventually passed back into civilian ownership.

Near full-scale model Supermarine Spitfire prototype K5054 at Southampton Airport
Near full-scale model Supermarine Spitfire prototype K5054 at Southampton Airport

In 1936 the first test flights of the Supermarine Spitfire were conducted at the airport, an event commemorated in 2004 with the erection of a near-full size sculpture of K5054, the prototype Spitfire at the road entrance.

On March 5, 2006 at 16:30 GMT, five restored Spitfires took off from Southampton Airport to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the first flight the of the Spitfire at the precise same time as the test flights in 1936.

There are plans, supported by the local council, to rename the airport after R. J. Mitchell, designer of the Spitfire. However, the choice whether to rename the airport lies with BAA.[4][5]

  • Aer Arann (Cork, Galway)
  • Air France
    • operated by Brit Air (Paris-Charles de Gaulle)
  • Aurigny Air Services (Alderney)
  • Blue Islands (Guernsey)
  • Bulgarian Air Charter (Varna)
  • Eastern Airways (Aberdeen, Angers, Brussels, Inverness, Leeds/Bradford, Newcastle)
  • Flybe (Aberdeen [begins 30 March], Alicante, Amsterdam, Avignon, Belfast-City, Bergerac, Berne, Brest, Brussels, Chambéry, Cherbourg, Dublin, Düsseldorf, Edinburgh, Faro, Frankfurt, Galway, Geneva, Glasgow-International, Guernsey, Hanover, Inverness [begins 8 May], Isle of Man, Jersey, Leeds/Bradford, Limoges, Málaga, Manchester, Murcia, Newcastle, Newquay [begins 30 March], Nice, Palma, Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Perpignan, Rennes, Salzburg)
  • Isles of Scilly Skybus (Isles of Scilly, Newquay)

Southampton Airport has one runway, 02/20. Only approach 20 has an instrument landing system (ILS) frequency, and the airport has VHF omnidirectional range/distance measuring equipment (VOR/DME), non-directional beacon (NDB) navigational aids.

Southampton Airport Frequencies are:
Approach/Radar 128.850, 131.000
Tower 118.200
Zone 120.225
ATIS 113.350

Southampton Airport is served by a dedicated mainline railway station, Southampton Airport (Parkway), on the South Western Main Line from London Waterloo and Winchester to Southampton, Bournemouth and Poole, with a fast and frequent service to those places. The airport is also located close to the junction between the M3 motorway and M27 motorway, giving easy road access to Southampton, Winchester, Bournemouth, Portsmouth and places between.

Most airports have both Standard Instrument Departure (SIDS) and Standard Terminal Arrival Route (STARS). Southampton Airport doesn't; it has STARS, but not SIDS. Due to this fact, a different type of clearance is given. For example, for a FlyBe flight outbound to Jersey, the clearance might sound like this: "Jersey 633 is cleared to Guernsey via THRED R41, climb initially 3,000ft then as instructed by radar FL160 squawk 2415, after the noise abatement fly radar heading 020 degrees."

On June 10, 1990, British Airways Flight 5390 suffered an explosive decompression while flying from Birmingham to Málaga, Spain. With captain Tim Lancaster sucked halfway out of the cockpit, co-pilot Alastair Atchison managed to land the plane safely at Southampton with no fatalities.[6]

  1. ^ UK Aeronautical Information Service
  2. ^ CAA UK Airport Statistics
  3. ^ Itchen Locations: Roman Level Accessed 5th April 2007
  4. ^ Airport rename to honour Spitfire
  5. ^ Airport Spitfire rename supported
  6. ^ Aircraft Accident Report No. 1/92

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The Borough of Eastleigh
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southampton_Airport"
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