Having grown up in Thanet, Kent, just some 20 minutes from Manston Airport, I am pleased to see that the airport is due to finally return to commercial activity, easing the pressure on the existing London airports and the channel tunnel rail service.
Spain, in particular Mallorca, could be set for a boost with flights from Kent within the next five years, airport bosses hope.
It is envisaged one million passengers could travel through the Manston Airport terminal annually with meetings with big-name budget airlines, including Ryanair, easyJet and Wizz Air mooted.
Bosses claim the project to re-open the Thanet site could see it operating as a passenger airport once again by 2028.
This will not be the firs time the airport, just 20 miles from Canterbury will be operating flights to Palma.
Aspro Holidays operated a series of summer charter services during the 1992–93 summer season with its in-house airline Inter European Airways to Palma, Mallorca and Larnaca, Cyprus using the Boeing 737, and added a service to Heraklion, Crete, which was often operated using its larger Boeing 757 airliner but when Aspro was taken over by Airtours, the flights ceased.
A new terminal is going to be built and it expects to handle some one million passengers per year. The airport will also have regular shuttle connections to nearby railway stations and park-and-fly centres to ease traffic and emissions in the area.