Tyne and Wear Metro is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its extension to Newcastle Airport.
The line cost £12m, and opened on November 17, 1991, and provides one of the country’s fastest transfers between airport and city centre.
As the airport has grown, the line has benefited millions of holidaymakers and business travellers, and has carried 7.5 million customers since it opened.
Metro is owned and managed by Nexus, which considers the airport line to be one of the more important projects in Metro’s history.
Construction of the line began in 1990 with funding from the EEC, the forerunner of the European Union. It was the Metro’s first extension of Metro since 1984 with the line to South Shields, but even when Metro opened in August 1980, local politicians wanted the line to be extended to the airport.
To extend the line to the airport, 3.5 km of new track was laid from the original Bank Foot terminus across fields behind Woolsington village. A second platform was built at Bank Foot, a park and ride site was built at Callerton Parkway, and new level crossings were built at Bank Foot and Callerton Parkway.
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