Nicosia International Airport is a largely disused airport located 8.2 km west of the Cypriot capital city of Nicosia in the Lakatamia suburb. It was originally the main airport for the island, but commercial activity ceased following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. The airport site is now mainly used as the headquarters of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus.
Nicosia was the principal airport for Cyprus from its initial construction in the 1930s as Royal Air Force station RAF Nicosia until 1974. At first it acted principally as a military airport and it is still owned by the British Ministry of Defence.
The landing strip was constructed in 1939 by the Shell Company and Pierides & Michaelides Ltd. Services were provided by Misrair with four-engined DH.86 aircraft.
During the Second World War the airport's facilities and runway were extended by local contractors Stelios Joannou and George Paraskevaides. American bombers used the runway in 1943–44 when returning from the allied bombings of the Romanian Ploieşti oil fields.
After the war commercial services were reintroduced, and by 1948 Misrair, BOAC, Cyprus Airways and MEA were providing regular services.
The facilities provided were limited, with three Nissen huts
used as a terminal building housing Customs, Immigration, Civil
Aviation, Signals, Traffic and Operational Services. Restaurant services
were provided by the NAAFI.
In 1949 the first terminal building was designed and built by the
Public Works Department at a cost of £50,000 and was opened in May of
that year. The building was then extended together with the aircraft
apron in 1959. The building was vacated in 1968 with the opening of the
new terminal. The Nicosia Flying Club and other flying organisations
continued to use the old building.
The RAF
withdrew from the airfield in 1966 due to limited space brought on by
vastly increasing civilian aircraft movements. On 27 March 1968 a modern
new terminal, designed by the German company
Dorsch und Gehrmann from Wiesbaden, and built by Cybarco, was opened, at a cost of £1,100,000 sterling, of which £500,000 was contributed by Britain.
The new terminal could accommodate 800 passengers at one time and the parking apron 11 aircraft.
In June 1974 plans were in place for the terminal to be extended and
the apron to be enlarged to 16 aircraft of which 2 places were to be for
widebodied aircraft. But this was never to happen: on 15 July 1974 right wing Greek nationalists overthrew the democratically elected president of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios.
Nicosia Airport was briefly closed by the coupists, then used on 17
July 1974 to ferry troops from Greece to Cyprus to support the coup
against Makarios. Only on the 18 July was it allowed to reopen to
civilian traffic, becoming a site of chaotic scenes as holidaymakers and
other foreign nationals tried to leave the island.
Finally, on 20 July 1974, Turkey invaded Cyprus, bombing the airport heavily and forcing its permanent closure.
The leaders of the Greek Cypriot Community and Turkish Cypriot
Community discussed reopening Nicosia International Airport at the
beginning of 1975.
After the leader of the Greek Cypriot community, Archbishop Makarios,
had initially rejected the Turkish Cypriot proposal to reopen the
airport to international traffic under joint control,
agreement to reopen it was 'in principle' reached during the negotiations in Vienna from 28 April to 3 May 1975.
However, discussions by a joint committee set up for that purpose were unproductive.
The last commercial airline flights out of Nicosia Airport took place
in 1977 under UN Special Authorisation, when three of the remaining
Cyprus Airways aircraft stranded there since the 1974 invasion were
retrieved by British Airways engineers and flown to London. One of
these, a Trident 2 is now on show at the Imperial War Museum Duxford.
With the Turkish invasion the airport was the scene of some of the
heaviest fighting between Cypriot and Turkish forces, which led the United Nations Security Council
to declare it a United Nations Protected Area (UNPA) during the
conflict. This required both sides to withdraw at least 500 metres from
the perimeter of the airport. With the ceasefire signed on 16 August
1974 Nicosia Airport became part of the United Nations controlled Buffer Zone
separating the two communities on the island, and it has been
inoperable as a fully functioning airport ever since. However, active
United Nations helicopters are based at the site, it is the headquarters
for the UN peace keeping mission in Cyprus UNFICYP
and it is used as one of the sites for intercommunal peace talks. It is
also the home to a number of recreational facilities for UN personnel.
Following the closure of Nicosia Airport a new airport, Larnaca International Airport (LCA), was opened in the Republic of Cyprus in 1975, and in Northern Cyprus the Ercan International Airport (ECN) was opened in 2004, both on former RAF airfields. Paphos International Airport (PFO) was also opened in the Republic of Cyprus in 1983.
There have been some plans for Nicosia Airport to be reopened under United Nations (UN) control as a goodwill measure, but so far neither the Greek nor the Turkish Cypriots have seriously pursued this option.
In 2013 Dr Michael Paraskos
of the Cornaro Institute in Cyprus argued that with three other
functioning airports in Cyprus the old Nicosia Airport would no longer
be needed even in the event of a political settlement on the island.
Instead he suggested it should be turned into a tax-free industrial
zone, designed to attract foreign high tech firms, and employing
Cypriots from both the Greek and Turkish communities on the island.
Incidents and accidents:
- On 3 March 1956 a Handley Page Hermes
(a Hermes IV, G-ALDW, operated by Skyways Limited) was destroyed on the
ground by a time-bomb in the forward freight compartment. The explosion
occurred 20 minutes before the aircraft was due to depart for the United
Kingdom with 68 passengers. There were no fatalities.
- On 27 April 1956 an RAF Douglas Dakota was destroyed on the ground by a bomb thought to have been placed by EOKA fighters.
- On 20 April 1967 a Bristol Britannia, HB-ITB, operating a charter flight bringing tourists from Bangkok, Thailand to Basel in Switzerland, crashed on approach to the airport in bad weather. 126 were killed but two German and two Swiss
passengers survived; three of them were seriously injured and were
treated at a United Nations field hospital near Nicosia, the fourth was
reported to be unhurt.
- On 29 January 1973 an EgyptAir Ilyushin Il-18
aircraft, SU-AOV, crashed into the Kyrenia Mountain range
near the village of Karavas at an altitude of 783m (117m below the
crest) while on downwind on a nighttime approach to Nicosia runway 14 from Cairo. All 37 aboard (7 crew and 30
passengers) killed.
- On August 29, 1973, a Czechoslovak Airlines Tupolev Tu-104, OK-MDE,
operating flight CSA531 from Damascus overran the runway and veered to the right, 150 m short of the runway end. Thank God no fatalities were reported among the 70 passengers and crewupon landing.
The aircraft was due to fly onwards to Prague from Nicosia. No
fatalities were reported among the 70 passengers and crew. OK-DME is still located north of the airfield.
- On 20 July 1974, two empty Cyprus Airways airliners (a Hawker-Siddeley HS121 Trident 1E (5B-DAE), and a Trident 2E (5B-DAB)) were destroyed on the ground by the Turkish Air Force during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. 5B-DAB can still be seen on the northern apron! (35°09`42 N, 33°16`24 E)
-
On 22 July 1974, 33 people were killed when 20 ageing Nord Noratlas and 10 C-47 Skytrains, of the 354 Transport Squadron "Pegasus", were assigned to transport a Greek commando force to protect the airport from invading Turks. This operation was named Operation NIKI.
An almost retired RAF Shackleton MR.3 (XF700) was flown to Nicosia in the early 1970s for use as a fire dump trainer. She was parked ready for training use when the Turkish invasion occurred. Its tail sections have fallen off and a tree is growing through her but the remains can still be seen on the right side of the treshold of the former RWY08. (35°09`13 N, 33°15`55 E)
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicosia_International_Airport
http://www.ronaldv.nl/abandoned/airfields/CY/nicosia.html
