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Glasgow Prestwick Airport (EGPK) lies on Scotland's Ayrshire coast, a mile northeast of the town of Prestwick and some 32 miles southwest of Glasgow. A large, ILS-equipped international airport with a long history of transatlantic and military flying, it remains an active base for Ryanair, cargo operations and USAF/USN refuelling detachments, making it a substantial and well-equipped destination for a simulator pilot flying VFR or IFR in the west of Scotland.
Prestwick is a major civil airport on the Ayrshire coast, historically famous for its connection with transatlantic flying and still busy today with scheduled low-cost services, air cargo and military transit traffic. Its long, well-lit hard runway and full ILS make it an interesting and accessible destination for simulator pilots, whether flying airliners on the Ryanair network or general aviation types taking advantage of the airport's clear surrounding airspace.
The airport sits on the west coast of Scotland, about one mile northeast of the town of Prestwick and roughly 32 miles southwest of Glasgow, within the Greater Glasgow and Ayrshire area. It lies close to Glasgow Airport in Renfrewshire, the other main airport serving the Central Belt. Prestwick is also notable as the site of the operations centre for Shanwick Oceanic Control, which manages air traffic over the northeastern quadrant of the North Atlantic as well as Scottish airspace and much of northern England, the Midlands and north Wales, underlining the airport's significance within the wider air traffic control structure.
Prestwick has two physical runways. The main runway, 12/30, is a hard-surfaced, lit runway equipped with an ILS; its published length is 9773 ft when used as runway 30 and 8985 ft when used as runway 12. The secondary runway, 03/21, is also hard-surfaced and lit, with a published length of 5986 ft as runway 03 and 6245 ft as runway 21. Field elevation is 52 ft, with the airport located at approximately 55.5094N, 4.5944W.
Prestwick provides a full air traffic control service. Approach can be contacted on 120.55 MHz, the ATIS broadcasts on 121.125 MHz, Prestwick Radar operates on 129.45 MHz, and the Tower frequency is 118.15 MHz. The main runway, 12/30, is equipped with an ILS for instrument approaches.
Prestwick's aviation story stretches back to the 1930s, with passenger facilities added in 1938 and subsequent investment making the airfield suitable for jet transport. Wartime USAAF diagrams from October 1946 show an earlier runway layout of 14/32 crossed by a shorter 8/26 runway; by 1958 the main runway, then numbered 13/31, was 7,000 ft long, and in May 1960 an extension to 9,800 ft opened. A parallel taxiway, link road and new terminal were opened by the Queen Mother in 1964, with the runway extension notably crossing the main road into Prestwick, controlled at first by a level-crossing system. During the Second World War the RAF controlled transatlantic flights from Prestwick, and the airfield became part of the Atlantic Bridge route linking Europe and North America. It has long served as a refuelling stop for the United States Air Force and Royal Canadian Air Force. Until 1990, British government policy required all transatlantic flights to and from Scotland to use Prestwick rather than Glasgow, and scheduled transatlantic services by Air Canada and Northwest Airlines continued into the 1980s before moving to Glasgow Airport once restrictions were lifted. Part of the site was occupied until February 2016 by the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm as RNAS Prestwick, known as HMS Gannet, which operated Sea King search and rescue helicopters covering one of the largest SAR areas in the UK, including Ben Nevis, the Lakes, Northern Ireland and waters up to 200 nautical miles off the Irish coast; in 2009 the unit answered 447 call-outs, around a fifth of the UK's total military SAR taskings that year. Prestwick is also the only place in the United Kingdom where Elvis Presley is known to have set foot, briefly, when a USAF transport carrying him home from West Germany stopped to refuel in 1960. The airport gained renewed commercial life from 1992 following its purchase by Canadian entrepreneur Matthew Hudson, who also established the airport's own railway station on the Ayrshire Coast Line, making it the first Scottish airport with a station of its own.
Prestwick remains an active mixed-use airport, serving as an operating base for Ryanair alongside a growing cargo and e-commerce business, including Air China Cargo operations. Since the Scottish Government took control of the airport in November 2013, service contracts have been established with the USAF, USN, USMC, the Defense Logistics Agency and the National Guard, and the airfield continues to be used as a refuelling stop for US and Canadian military aircraft.
