An historic UK airport that once welcomed royalty and Pope John Paul II is being closed to make way for a battery gigafactory. Coventry Airport, situated in the West Midlands near the UK’s second city, Birmingham, will shut down operations in June 2026, after 90 years.
The airport started life as Baginton Aerodrome in 1936, and served as a fighter airfield during the Second World War and was damaged in Hitler’s devastating 1940 Coventry Blitz. As well as military service, it has seen almost every aspect of aviation, from cargo to medical, and commercial passenger traffic, as well as the rise of package holidays to Austria, Italy, and Spain in the eighties, and budget flights to Poland with Wizz from the 2000s. On his only trip to the UK in 1982, Pope John Paul II held Mass for around 350,000 people there. It is also home to the Midlands Air Museum.
But times change. Acquired by Rigby Group in 2009, since 2021, it has been earmarked to become an electric battery factory, and apart from the Museum, the businesses that rent hangar space have now been formally asked to vacate by June 2026, the BBC has reported.
A Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) spokesperson said in a statement that the aerodrome “has given formal notice to us of its plan to close the airport permanently with effect from 11 June 2026.” The Rigby Group described the notice as a “procedural submission first envisaged when local planning approval for Green Power Park was granted in 2022” that “enables the next phase of infrastructure work for the site to proceed.”
Some locals have mourned the loss of the airport in online commentary, calling for stakeholders to attract more airlines and save the facility. Others looking on from abroad see a similar fate in store for smaller regional airports in their areas, such as Antwerp International or Düren, which controversially operates at a loss with subsidies and is seen as superfluous to Brussels Airport. But many appear to recognise that Coventry has been superseded by the international hub at nearby Birmingham Airport.
Sited within the “West Midlands Investment Zone,” a growth initiative aimed at driving manufacturing and creating at least 30,000 jobs, the Green Power Park is intended to fuel investment in a region that was once considered a centre of industry, particularly automotive, in the UK. Authorities hope up to £5.5 billion (around €6.3 billion) in venture capital finance could ensue.
