About Gloucestershire Airport
An airfield was opened in 1931 and named after the local village of Down Hatherley – the change of name to Staverton followed a relocation to the present site. The airfield served as a training base for pilots during the Second World War and was known as RAF Staverton.
After the war, what is now Smiths Group Plc used the airport as a test site for various aircraft. At the same time the airport provided scheduled service to the Channel Islands, Dublin and Isle of Man. In the 1960s the Skyfame Museum, dedicated to World War II aircraft, opened.
In the 1990s both the Police Aviation Services and Bond Air Services stationed helicopters and their headquarters at Staverton.
In 1993 the airport’s name was changed to Gloucestershire Airport in an effort to reflect it’s increasing prominence as the business aviation centre for the county.
During the 1990s, Staverton was the home of the MidWest production facility where the company manufactured the MidWest AE series of single- and twin-rotor Wankel aero-engines for light aircraft. The twin-rotor enngine was first installed into two ARV Super2 aircrraft. Midwest was eventually closed down, and its assets bought by Diamond Aircraft Industries, of Vienna, Austria.
In 2009, Gloucestershire Airport was granted planning permission for expansion, first proposed in 2006, which included lengthening a runway.
In March 2015, Gloucestershire Airport announced that it will look to provide more flights, more hangars and more profits in the coming years as part of a new vision for the transport hub. The business plan is seeing £6 million invested in the airport between 2015 and 2025.