inspects
RAF Regiment personnel during a visit to RAF Ronaldsway, June 11, 1942.
Vickers Viscount in front of the airport control tower in 1988
Early years Ronaldsway was first used as an airfield in 1928 with passenger services to the UK starting in 1933, operated by
Blackpool and West Coast Air Services (later West Coast Air Services). Further services were established by
Aer Lingus and
Railway Air Services (RAS) from 1934. From 1937 RAS operations from Ronaldsway to the UK were transferred to
Isle of Man Air Services. In a 1936 expansion of the Ronaldsway Airport, workers discovered a mass grave believed to hold the remains of soldiers who died during the
Battle of Ronaldsway in 1275.
Second World War RAF Ronaldsway The airfield came under
Royal Air Force control at the outbreak of the
Second World War. Known as RAF Ronaldsway, it was one of the few airfields that continued operating civilian flights throughout the wartime period. The airfield was used by № 1 GDGS (Ground Defence and Gunnery School) operating
Westland Wallace aircraft, the
drogues from these aircraft being fired on from gun emplacements on
St Michael's Isle (Fort Island) and
Santon Head. An expansion of the airport during the War led to the discovery of the archaeological remains of a
Neolithic settlement belonging to what is now called the
Ronaldsway culture, in honour of this site. RAF operations continued until 1943 when the airfield was handed over to the
Admiralty for further development as a
Fleet Air Arm training station.
HMS Urley Now a
naval air station, Royal Naval Air Station Ronaldsway (RNAS Ronaldsway), the airport was taken out of commission in 1943 for almost twelve months of extensive development undertaken by
John Laing & Son. By the summer of 1944 the airfield had evolved from a grass landing area with a few hangars to a four runway airfield with the infrastructure to house and operate three training squadrons operating with
Fairey Barracuda torpedo bombers. Commissioned as HMS
Urley (
Manx for Eagle) by the
Royal Navy on 21 June 1944, with accounts handled by , flying recommenced on 15 July 1944. The airfield's main role was that of a torpedo working-up station. No. 1 OTU consisted of
710,
713 and
747 Naval Air Squadrons and these operated until the cessation of hostilities in 1945. The base was '
paid off' on 14 January 1946, and transferred to Care and Maintenance under . The development also included resurfacing of the runway and was completed in 2011. It has emerged that the actual runway take-off length was underestimated by 160 metres in the £1.5 million feasibility study. Whilst the study originally looked into the aviation marketing implication of runway length, airport management denied that the extension was for the use of heavier aircraft, stating that the resurfacing and extension were to comply with international safety standards. There was a significant overspend on the project due to poor foreign exchange management of the Euro-denominated components of the costs. It is thought that the Manx Treasury Minister may have been referring to the expense of the runway and the additional £6,515,000 control tower project when he stated in his 2009 Budget speech that the Isle of Man could no longer afford "Rolls-Royce" projects. Following the completion of the runway extension project the largest aircraft that can operate fully at Ronaldsway is the
Boeing 757. In September 2019,
Flybe announced it would shut down its base operations at the airport by Spring 2020. == Terminal ==