Edinburgh Airport History Turnhouse Aerodrome was the most northerly British air defence base in World War I utilized by the Royal Flying Corps. The little base opened in 1915 and it was utilized to house the 603 (City of Edinburgh) Squadron from 1925, which consisted of DH 9As, Westland Wapitis, Hawker Harts, and Hawker Hind light bombers. All the aircraft employed a grass air strip. In 1918 the Royal Air Force was formed and the airfield was named RAF Turnhouse and ownership transferred to the Ministry of Defence. When the Second World War broke out, RAF Fighter Command took control over the airfield and a runway of three,900 ft (1,189 m) was paved to deal with the Vickers Supermarine Spitfire. During the Battle of Britain, Nos 3, 65, and 141 Squadrons had been present at the airbase. When the war ended the airfield still remained under military control, but by the late 1940s the first commercial services were launched. In 1947, British European Airways began a service in between Edinburgh and London using Vickers Vikings followed by the Viscount and Vanguard series. View of the control tower from the terminal creating In 1952 the runway was extended to 6000 ft to handle the Vampire FB5s and an aircraft carrier Catcher Net (in no way utilized) to defend targeted traffic on the adjacent A9 road. In 1956 a new passenger terminal was built to provide improved commercial service and five years later it was extended. The Ministry of Defence transferred ownership to the Ministry of Aviation in 1960 to offer improved commercial service to the airport. Flying was temporarily diverted to East Fortune, which had its runway extended to accommodate the airliners of the period. In 1971 the British Airports Authority took over the airport and instantly started to expand it by constructing a new runway and terminal building. Though the original main runway 13/31 (which is now 12/30) served the airport well, its alignment had the disadvantage of suffering from severe crosswinds and the other two minor runways were really brief and could not be readily extended, so movements were transferred to a new runway (07/25 which has because turn into 06/24) in an addition fully outside the original airfield boundary. This runway, completed in 1977 is two,556 m (8,386 ft) in length, and was in a position to take all modern airliners such as Concorde. A new terminal was built alongside the runway to cater for the further site visitors. The old terminal and hangars had been converted into a cargo centre. The only international services from Edinburgh throughout the 1980s were to Amsterdam and Dublin, but in the following years links had been opened to destinations in France and Germany. By the end of the decade BAA had been privatised and funds had been utilized to extend the existing terminal constructing and create parking aprons. In 2005, a new 57 m (187 ft) tall air targeted traffic control tower was completed at a price of £10m (€16m). An extension to the terminal opened in September 2006 referred to as the "South East Pier". This extension initially added six gates on a new pier to the South-East of the original developing. A further 4 gates had been added to the South East Pier at the end of 2008. Several Edinburgh Airport parking options exist, both on site and off site.