Qualla: Caernarfon Airport

Caernarfon Airport: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. If you fly low over the western shore of the Lleyn Peninsula on a clear morning, you can pick out three pale concrete strips meeting in a rough triangle - the unmistakable signature of a Second World War RAF training airfield. The triangle layout dates from 1941, when the Air Ministry built Llandwrog as a base for No. 9 Air Gunners School and No. 9 Air Observers School. Eighty-five years later, the same runways serve as Caernarfon Airport: ICAO code EGCK, one licensed runway, and helicopters that lift off most days on missions that the people who built the place would never have imagined.

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Caernarfon Airport: The Coastguard Comes North

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ijanderson977, Public domain. 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 ...

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Image: Ijanderson977 | Public domain

Caernarfon Airport: Wales Air Ambulance

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. 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 Ba...

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Image: Public domain

Caernarfon Airport: Sharing the Field

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit William M. Connolley, CC BY 3.0. 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 ...

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Image: William M. Connolley | CC BY 3.0

Caernarfon Airport: From Llandwrog to EGCK

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. 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 ...

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Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0