This is the UK's first international airport for half a century. But just 14 months ago it was a disused RAF nuclear bomber base that people feared might contain unexploded bombs and radioactivity. Thomas Lane checked in at Robin Hood Airport to find out how it was transformed. The uk's first new international airport for 50 years has just opened for business, giving the residents of Doncaster and other nearby cities a much faster route to the sun. The long schlep down to Birmingham or across the Pennines to Manchester to get on a plane will become a dim and distant memory. Robin Hood Airport - presumably so-named in a bid to win business from nearby Nottinghamshire - is built on the site of RAF Finningley, which has been through a number of incarnations over the years. Part of Bomber Command during the Second World War, it then became a base for the now redundant Vulcan nuclear bomber from the height of the Cold War in 1957 until the base closed in 1996. This latter use made the site ideal for redevelopment as an airport because the V-bomber needed a runway 3 km long, which means it is the only airport outside London capable of handling the A380 super-jumbo due to come into service next year.
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