Qualla: Liverpool John Lennon Airport

Liverpool John Lennon Airport: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daviessimo, CC BY-SA 3.0. Look out the left-hand window on final approach to runway 27 and you can read the words painted across the terminal roof: "Above us, only sky." The line is from John Lennon's 1971 song "Imagine," and the airport beneath it was named after him in 2002, making EGGP the first airport in the United Kingdom to take a person's name. Yoko Ono unveiled the dedication. A 7-foot bronze statue of Lennon now stands in the check-in hall. A full-scale Yellow Submarine sits on a traffic island at the entrance. None of which entirely captures the strangeness of the place. The airport began life in 1933 as Speke. It built Halifax bombers during the war. It was where the Beatles' fans waited for their boys to come home from Hamburg. And it now operates from a terminal where the original 1930s art-deco buildings, perfectly preserved, stand as a Crowne Plaza hotel beside the modern aprons.

Image: Daviessimo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Liverpool John Lennon Airport: Speke, 1933

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rept0n1x, CC BY-SA 3.0. It opened officially on 1 July 1933, on a flat stretch of land between the Mersey estuary and the village of Speke. The first scheduled service had already begun three years earlier — Imperial Airways flying from Liverpool to Croydon via Manchester and Birmingham, the first prope...

Image: Rept0n1x | CC BY-SA 3.0

Liverpool John Lennon Airport: Lockheed at Speke, Bombers Overhead

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wehiremonkeys, CC0. During the Second World War, RAF Speke was one of the most important aviation manufacturing centres in Britain. The Rootes factory turned out hundreds of bombers. Lockheed set up an assembly line on site for aircraft shipped in pieces across the Atlantic — Hudson maritime patrol ...

Image: Wehiremonkeys | CC0

Liverpool John Lennon Airport: The Birdman of Speke

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rept0n1x, CC BY-SA 3.0. The airport held public air displays through the 1950s in aid of the Soldiers, Sailors and Air Force Association charity, and they pulled crowds in the tens of thousands. On 21 May 1956, the headline act was Léo Valentin, a French parachutist who performed as "the Birdman." Valen...

Image: Rept0n1x | CC BY-SA 3.0

Liverpool John Lennon Airport: The New Runway and the Old Terminal

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit calflier001, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1966 Prince Philip opened a new 7,500-foot runway on the south-eastern side of the airfield, freeing the airport from the limits of its 1930s site. The old terminal, however, refused to be erased. Famous for the television footage of screaming Beatles fans waving from its terr...

Image: calflier001 | CC BY-SA 2.0

Liverpool John Lennon Airport: Above Us, Only Sky

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Boing! said Zebedee, CC BY-SA 3.0. By 1997 the airport handled 689,468 passengers a year. By 2007 the number was 5.47 million. EasyJet built it into a major hub. The rebranding in 2002 — the name change, the statue, the Lennon motto on the roof — captured a moment when Liverpool itself was reasserting its identity...

Image: Boing! said Zebedee | CC BY-SA 3.0