East London Airport 5.58

4 star(s) from 72 votes
Settlers Way
East London, 5201
South Africa

About East London Airport

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East London Airport is an airport serving East London, a city in the Eastern Cape province on the southeast coast of South Africa.East London's airport is a small but bustling one that plays an important role in the growing economy of the Eastern Cape. Every day it welcomes between 20 and 30 flights โ€“ which bring people to East London each year. Of these, about are holidaymakers, mostly local, and about 15% are foreign tourists. In 2013, the airport served 658,363 passengers. In 2016, East London Airport was voted the fastest growing airport in South Africa, having accomplished an almost 19% increase in traffic over a 12 month-period. The airport welcomed over 806,000 passengers in 2014, beating the 679,000 that passed through East London in 2015. The second best performing airport for growth in 2014 was Kimberley, with its traffic growing by 11%. Overall the top airports of South Africa witnessed nearly 39.7 million passengers in 2016, up 5.3% on the year before.HistoryThe airport had an inauspicious beginning in 1927, when Lieut Colonel Alistair Miller asked the East London town council to help establish a municipal aerodrome at Woodbrook, west of the city.Passenger flights were undertaken by two de Havilland Moth planes on Saturday afternoons and all day on Sundays, weather permitting. Flights could also be booked for weekdays, but only by special arrangement. In 1931 it took 11 hours to fly from Windhoek in Namibia to East London.In 1944 a new airport was built at Collondale, about 2 km west of the present terminal building.In 1965 the airport was again moved, this time to its present site, 9 km west of the city centre. Construction of the terminal buildings finished in 1966, and the airport was named after Ben Schoeman, the minister of transport at the time.