| 1934 | Using the meadows at the end of Monkton Village, a few small planes began using what was to become Prestwick Airport.
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| 1935 | David McIntyre, founder of Scottish Aviation Ltd, acquired 348 acres of land behind Orangefield House in Ayrshire. Here he set up operations for an airfield and had a hangar, lecture rooms, offices and a small control tower.
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| 1938 | Passenger facilities were added to Prestwick.
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| During the war | Prestwick Airport became a manufacturing site, which continued to produce planes up until 1998. Scottish Aviation did the production. The airport received planes from the USA on a lend-lease program, up to 300 per day at times.
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| 1941 | The original production facility expanded exceedingly. This year the Palace of Engineering, which had been at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow for the 1938 Empire Exhibition, was dismantled and rebuilt at Prestwick. It still stands at this airport and is owned by British Aerospace Engineering Systems.
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| 1953 | The US Air Force opened a base on the Monkton side of the airport.
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| 1958 | Government plans for a new terminal building, a new loop road around the airport, a new control tower, a freight building and an extension to the runway.
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| 1960 | Rock and roll singer Elvis Pressley visited Prestwick Airport.
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| 1962 | The plans for the control tower came to fruition in April of this year.
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| 1964 | Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, officiated at the opening of the new terminal building at Prestwick Airport.
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| 1966 | The original Orangefield House was torn down to make way for the new parallel taxiway. Also in 1966 the US Air Force closed their base on the Monkton side of the airport. It is now used by HMS Gannet from which a search and rescue service is provided by No. 771 Naval Air Squadron Sea Kings.
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| Late 1970s | British Airways ceased regular passenger air service to Prestwick. The airline still used the airport for pilot training intermittently, sometimes to train Concorde pilots.
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| 1991 | The future of Prestwick Airport became uncertain when the British Airports Authority decided to move all of Scotland’s transatlantic traffic to Glasgow. The idea included selling Prestwick. Passenger services fell sharply soon after this.
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| 1992 | This was the last time that Prestwick Airport had its semi-annual air shows. The shows had begun in 1967.
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| 1994 | The airport built its own railway station on the Glasgow-Ayr line which runs directly past the airport. Soon afterward, Ryanair opened a route to Dublin from Prestwick. The airport began seeing good results from these events.
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| 1995 | Ryanair opened several more routes from Prestwick Airport. Ryanair now uses the airport as one of its maintenance hubs and has 20 destinations from Prestwick.
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| 1990s | Late in the decade, several low cost airlines moved into the Prestwick market. This made the airport have more passenger traffic than ever before.
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| 2005 | Infratil, a New Zealand company which owns Prestwick Airport, completed a three million pound remodelling program. In July of this year, the airport became Scotland’s entry point to the G8 Summit.
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