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Campbeltown Airport lies at Machrihanish on the Kintyre peninsula in western Scotland, occupying part of the site of the former RAF Machrihanish, once one of NATO's longest runways. Today it is a small HIAL-operated regional airport with a single very long runway, offering an interesting destination for VFR pilots exploring the west coast and the approach to the Firth of Clyde.
Campbeltown Airport sits at Machrihanish, close to the tip of the Kintyre peninsula in Argyll and Bute, on the site of what was once RAF Machrihanish, a major Cold War airbase. It is operated today by Highlands and Islands Airports Limited (HIAL) under a CAA Ordinary Licence (Number P808), which permits public transport flights and flying instruction. For a sim pilot, the field's chief point of interest is its enormous, oversized runway, a legacy of its NATO past, set against the dramatic scenery of the Kintyre coast and the Firth of Clyde approaches.
The airfield is located at Machrihanish, about 3 miles (6 km) west of the town of Campbeltown, near the southern tip of the Kintyre peninsula on Scotland's west coast. It lies at a strategic point commanding the entrance to the Firth of Clyde, historically valued for guarding the approaches to the submarine base at Faslane and the former US facility at Holy Loch. Passengers arriving at Campbeltown are afforded views over the island of Davaar, which lies close to the town.
Campbeltown has a single physical runway, 11/29, hard-surfaced and lit, at a field elevation of 33 feet. The runway is unusually asymmetric in its published lengths: 5,950 feet is available on runway 11, and 5,142 feet on runway 29. There is no ILS. This is a much-reduced portion of the original Cold War-era runway, which at 10,003 feet was the longest at any public airport in Scotland.
Campbeltown provides an Aerodrome Flight Information Service, callsign Campbeltown Information, on 125.905 MHz. There is no ILS, though instrument approach procedures have historically been flown into the airport in poor weather.
The island of Davaar, just off Campbeltown, is a notable visual landmark for aircraft approaching the airfield from the town side. The airport itself is easily identified by its very long, wide runway at Machrihanish, on the flat coastal plain at the southern end of the Kintyre peninsula, with the open waters of the Atlantic and the Firth of Clyde as a further reference to the west and east respectively.
An airfield was first established at Machrihanish towards the end of the First World War as a satellite of the Luce Bay Airship Station, operated by the Royal Naval Air Service and, from April 1918, the newly formed Royal Air Force; No. 272 Squadron flew Airco DH.6 anti-submarine patrols from the site before it closed and reverted to civilian use, including scheduled flights to Islay, Renfrew and Belfast in the 1930s. The Fleet Air Arm requisitioned the airfield in 1940, and a new airfield was built nearby in 1941, becoming RNAS Machrihanish (HMS Landrail); it was heavily used for wartime training and anti-submarine and convoy escort duties, ranking among the busiest stations in the UK, before closing in 1946. It reopened briefly in the early 1950s to train Fleet Air Arm pilots for the Korean War. From 1960 to 1962 the airfield underwent major redevelopment, funded by NATO, replacing its original runways with a single 3,049 m (10,003 ft) runway capable of handling Avro Vulcan bombers, and it became RAF Machrihanish, hosting RAF, NATO and United States Marine Corps units, as well as US Navy SEAL Naval Special Warfare Group 2 facilities. The US Navy handed the base back to the Ministry of Defence on 30 June 1995, ending its NATO role. In March 1996 the Civil Aviation Authority granted HIAL an aerodrome licence, allowing commercial flights and establishing Campbeltown Airport within part of the former base. The wider airbase was sold in May 2012 for £1 to the Machrihanish Airbase Community Company (MACC) under community right-to-buy legislation, with two thirds of the runway leased to HIAL for continued airport operations. On 15 March 2005, a Loganair Britten-Norman Islander operating an air ambulance flight crashed into the sea 7.7 nautical miles from the airport while flying an instrument approach in low cloud, killing the pilot and paramedic on board.
Campbeltown Airport is operated by Highlands and Islands Airports Limited under CAA Ordinary Licence P808, which covers both public transport flights and flying instruction. Loganair operates the only scheduled service, linking Campbeltown with Glasgow. Since 2017, departing passengers at Campbeltown have not been subject to security screening, instead declaring they carry no prohibited items, though anyone connecting onward at Glasgow must clear security there. The wider former airbase at Machrihanish, of which the airport occupies part, is now run as a business park by the Machrihanish Airbase Community Company.
