Departure
93%
vs 95% ▼ 2
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Lydd London Ashford Airport (EGMD) lies on the flat expanse of Romney Marsh in south Kent, close to the Dungeness peninsula, and offers a single hard runway equipped with an ILS. Once known as Ferryfield and built to handle cross-Channel car-ferry flights, it remains a useful south-coast diversion and training field for visiting pilots, with a control tower and full radio service. Its history of car-carrying airliners, more recent search-and-rescue helicopter operations and ongoing expansion debates give it a distinctive character among Kent's smaller airports.
Lydd London Ashford Airport, despite its name, sits nowhere near London or Ashford: it is a small but fully licensed airfield on Romney Marsh in the far south of Kent. Long known simply as Lydd, and before that as Ferryfield, it was built to replace the earlier Ashford Airport at Lympne and to serve car-ferry flights across the Channel. Today it is a modest general aviation and charter field with a control tower, an ILS-equipped runway and a search-and-rescue helicopter presence, making it an interesting and accessible destination for a visiting VFR or IFR pilot.
The airfield is located on Romney Marsh in Kent, close to the Dungeness peninsula and the shingle coastline of the English Channel. It lies within the general south-east England low-level environment used by traffic transiting between the London airports and the Channel crossing points, and its position adjacent to Dungeness, with its nuclear power station and nature reserves, is a notable feature of the surrounding terrain.
Lydd has a single physical runway, 03/21, aligned north-east/south-west. Runway 03 is a hard surface 4,908 feet long and lit; the reciprocal, runway 21, is 4,786 feet long, also hard-surfaced and lit, and is equipped with an ILS for instrument approaches. Field elevation is 10 feet above mean sea level.
Lydd provides a radio service under the callsign Lydd Approach on 120.7 MHz for approach and inbound/outbound coordination, with a tower frequency of 128.525 MHz for Lydd Tower and an ATIS broadcast on 129.225 MHz for arrival and departure information. Runway 21 is served by an ILS, giving pilots an instrument approach option when visibility or cloud base make a visual arrival impractical.
The shingle expanse of Dungeness, with its distinctive power station, lies immediately to the south-east of the airfield and forms a prominent landmark for pilots orientating themselves on the approach to Lydd from over the Channel or along the Kent coast. The flat, low-lying character of Romney Marsh itself, largely free of significant obstructions, also helps in visually identifying the field from a distance.
The airfield began life as Ferryfield, built as a replacement for the original Ashford Airport at Lympne to support the cross-Channel car-ferry flights operated by Silver City Airways. It later took the official but somewhat misleading title of Lydd London Ashford Airport. Through the twentieth century it saw scheduled international flights and had periods of ownership investment, including a scheme backed by Sheikh Fahad al Athel that saw around £25 million spent on the airport over eight years. Proposals in the 2000s to extend the runway and build a new terminal, intended to boost passenger numbers, met sustained opposition from the Lydd Airport Action Group and the RSPB, who raised concerns about the nearby Dungeness to Pett Levels special protection area and the adjoining Dungeness special area of conservation, as well as possible conflict with plans for a new nuclear power station at Dungeness. The financial pressures of the period led to job losses at the airport in the late 2000s as management sought to reduce costs amid uncertainty over the expansion plans.
Lydd remains a working general aviation and charter airfield with a control tower and full radio coverage. A new hangar was completed in 2015, and since that year the airfield has been home to a search and rescue helicopter operation run by Bristow Helicopters. The runway area has at times also hosted large outdoor events, reflecting its use beyond purely aviation purposes, though its primary role continues to be as a flying field for private, training and charter traffic in the south Kent area.
