arrives to be used as an instructional airframe by AST. In the background is the original hangar 1, which dates back to the 1930s. The airport opened in 1936 as
Scone Aerodrome. A flight training school, training military pilots, was established shortly after the airport was opened. Immediately after the start of
World War II, researchers working on aircraft-mounted radars were stationed at Scone for a brief period, fitting their
radar systems to various aircraft. The site was unsuitable for such work, and the team moved to a new site in Wales in November. During the war,
309 (Polish) and
666 Squadrons from the
Royal Air Force used the aerodrome, then known as
RAF (
Royal Air Force)
Scone. The following units were also here at some point: The only scheduled commercial flights operated briefly from Perth were a British Airways service to
Stavanger in Norway at the beginning of the
Second World War, and a post-war BEA service to Glasgow's
Renfrew airport. The airport was subsequently bought by
Airwork Services, which continued the long tradition of
pilot training at Perth. By 1960 Airwork acquired
Air Service Training (AST), an engineering training school, which it relocated from the south of England to the airport. The whole operation took on the AST name. AST gained a worldwide reputation for aviation training, being known as Britain's Air University. Students of more than 100 countries have been trained at Perth. Following a worldwide downturn in aviation, AST pulled out of pilot training in 1996. A year later the site was bought by Morris Leslie Ltd. Perth Airport remains Scotland's main airport for general aviation and is the base of the Scottish Aero Club, which was founded in 1927. The airport is home to ACS Aviation Ltd, which provides private and commercial flight training, also on site is an aircraft maintenance company, ACS Engineering and numerous other non-aviation-related businesses. In 2011, AST announced a return to airline pilot training.
Scotland's Charity Air Ambulance (SCAA) was formed in 2012 and launched a helicopter air ambulance in May 2013 to assist the Scottish Air Ambulance Service (SAAS) to deliver front-line care to time-critical emergencies across Scotland. SCAA provides a fully equipped medical helicopter that can be deployed from its central base at Perth Airport to incidents across the length and breadth of Scotland. In February 2019, the airport was reported to be looking into the possibility of attracting
low-cost carriers such as
Easyjet and
Ryanair for scheduled passenger flights, though ACS Aviation subsequently denied having any such plans. Perth does not have the approach procedures required and its longest runway, at in length, is not long enough to accommodate commercial jet aircraft, which typically require a minimum of 1700m in order to land and take off. ==Runways==