Since 1 July 2015, Caernarfon Airport has been a base for His Majesty's Coastguard search and rescue. Bristow Helicopters won the ten-year contract from the Department for Transport in 2013, replacing the long-running RAF operation, and they operate two Sikorsky S-92 helicopters from the airfield - large twin-engined machines painted bright red and white, configured for over-water hoist rescues. From this corner of north-west Wales they cover the Irish Sea, Cardigan Bay, Snowdonia, and most of the rocky coastline between Holyhead and Aberystwyth. The Coastguard pilots who used to fly out of RAF Valley a few miles north now share the wider job from a civilian apron with a cafe and a small museum.

Caernarfon is also one of the home bases for the Wales Air Ambulance, the charity-funded Helicopter Emergency Medical Service that covers the whole country. The aircraft is an Airbus H145 - a twin-engined light utility helicopter, leased and operated on the charity's behalf by Babcock Mission Critical Services Onshore. The aircraft can be airborne within minutes and reach almost any incident in Snowdonia faster than a road ambulance could climb the same mountain. The crews live with their helicopter, do their own pre-flight checks, and respond to call-outs that range from climbing falls on Crib Goch to motorway crashes on the A55. The H145 is loud and unmistakable in the air; if you hear it overhead in Snowdonia, somebody is having the worst day of their life.

Around the rescue helicopters, the rest of Caernarfon Airport gets on with general aviation. The single licensed runway is 07/25; there is an unlicensed second runway 02/20, and a third 14/32 that has been disused for decades, the original wartime triangle now reduced to one and a half useful sides. The North Wales Flight Academy runs Private Pilot Licence training, the Microlight School handles the buzzing microlights that are a notable share of local traffic, and Geo Helicopters teaches rotorcraft on the apron. Pleasure flights and charters operate from the same buildings. There is no night licence; everyone goes home at dusk. The Caernarfon Airworld Aviation Museum on site has a helicopter simulator and a collection of period aircraft, including the only intact Hawker Sea Hawk in private hands.

The airfield opened in July 1941 with three runways, each fifty yards wide, two T1 hangars, a Bellman hangar, and six blister hangars strung along the northern perimeter track. No. 9 Air Gunners School operated Armstrong Whitworth Whitleys for turret training, Westland Lysanders for target towing, Fairey Battles, and twin-engined Avro Ansons. The school disbanded in June 1942 after just eleven months; No. 9 Air Observers School - later redesignated as No. 9 (Observer) Advanced Flying Unit - took over and ran night-flying training out of the field until June 1945. The wartime fatality rate at training fields was high. The airfield closed for flying in 1945, drifted through the 1950s and 60s as civil aviation slowly returned, and gained a full operating licence in 1976. The story since then has been a steady drift from training to transport to rescue - the same triangle of concrete carrying very different missions through eighty-five years of British aviation.