Airport History

City airport in a coastal setting

One of the youngest airports in the Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd (HIAL) group, Dundee Airport opened in 1963. It originally had a 900m grass runway built on land reclaimed from the Firth of Tay. The airport location is sandwiched between the estuary which flows into the North Sea and the city of Dundee, which is the fourth largest city in Scotland by population, in the historic county of Angus.

Glasgow was the first destination for scheduled flights, with Edinburgh and Prestwick soon following. The grass runway was replaced in the 1970s with a 1,100m tarmac runway with a later extension to 1,400m in the 1990s. In 1997, the then EU transport commissioner, Neil Kinnock, opened the current terminal building with improved runway lighting being installed in the previous decades along with customs status being granted.

The airport is owned by Dundee City Council and since 2007 has been managed by HIAL. Over the time of its management of Dundee Airport, HIAL has invested in a programme of works to ensure its long-term sustainability including the upgrading of screening equipment as part of Next Generation Security and runway resurfacing.

The airport has served a number of different routes since including Aberdeen, Amsterdam, Birmingham, Belfast Carlisle, Manchester, Eisbjerg and London. Loganair recently introduced a flight to connect the islands of Shetland and Orkney to Dundee and through to London Heathrow.  These flights are popular with both the leisure and business markets and welcomed over 100,000 passengers in the first year of the service.

Due to its location close to championship golf courses at St Andrews, Gleneagles and Carnoustie, Dundee Airport is a popular transport hub for players. During international competitions, the airport is busy with competitors and spectators on both scheduled flights and private aircraft. The airport is regularly used by celebrities and top sportspeople to access the area and nearby shooting estates.

Dundee City is well known for the three J’s – jute, jam and journalism. The first is from the time of great expansion during the Industrial Revolution as a result of the growing British Empire trade in materials such as flax and jute. The jam reference is actually for marmalade which was reputed to have been invented in the city by Janet Keiller in 1797 with her surname becoming a household brand. The third reference to journalism relates to the publishing firm DC Thomson & Co Ltd which was founded in Dundee in 1905 and remains one of the leading employers in the city. Their fame came from the publication of newspapers as well as children’s comics and magazines such as The Beano and The Dandy. Statues of key characters such as Desperate Dan and Minnie the Minx are immortalised in the city’s streets. 

Today, visitors flying into Dundee come to experience the city’s history but also for the more modern developments such as the Waterfront area which houses the V&A Dundee. With a busy university population and numerous large commercial businesses, the airport is regularly used by visiting academia, business people, and students from around the world.