Cambridge 2000: Newmarket Road: Cambridge Airport

Description: Newmarket Road: Cambridge Airport: tower
Date built: 1999-2000
Newmarket Road: Cambridge Airport map for Newmarket Road: Cambridge Airport
Date photograph taken: 27 May 2000 (Alternative map: Google map)

Cambridge Airport is owned and run by the Marshall family, it is mainly used for their aircraft maintenance business, but private pilots are also allowed to use the airport, and until early 2002 there was one regularly scheduled airline, Scot Airways (which was originally called Suckling Airways), whose main service from Cambridge was to Amsterdam.

The entire airfield is about 500 acres (200 hectares) in size, and in 2000 local politicians were starting to agitate to close the airport down and replace it with housing (given the usual policy this would mean more than 5000 households). The airfield is economically productive, and a valuable asset for Cambridge. There are thousands of acres of effectively uneconomic greenbelt land on the border of Cambridge, it would be much better to put housing on this, but currently no politician is willing to state the obvious.

In late 2000 the Marshalls announced that in principle they might be willing to move their aircraft business away from Cambridge, so the days of the airport might be numbered.

In the 2002 draft Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Structure Plan the airport was identified as the prime site for housing development in the city.

In 2002 the Marshalls asked for outline planning permission for a new terminal building. In May 2003 they withdrew this application.

Other photographs within 500 m: