Coventry Airport has entered its final days, with aviation activity stopping yesterday and the airport set to close on Thursday after 90 years of use. The last booked commercial flight brought Take That into the airport on Saturday, June 6, closing the book on a site that once connected the West Midlands with Europe.

That shift matters now because the airport’s owners have already moved the closure forward formally, notifying the UK Civil Aviation Authority that Coventry Aerodrome plans to shut permanently with effect from 11 June 2026. Rigby Group said the submission had been envisaged when local planning approval for Green Power Park was granted in 2022, a signal that the land is now moving decisively from runway to redevelopment.

For travellers in the region, the loss is bigger than a single terminal. Coventry Airport was once a busier hub, with Wizz Air flying to destinations including Poland and Italy until 2008, and in more recent years it was reduced to the Air Ambulance Service and private charter flights. Its history stretches back to WWII, when it opened as a RAF base under the name Baginton Aerodome, and it later handled visits as notable as Pope John Paul II’s helicopter arrival in 1982.

Not everyone thinks the end should be final. Isabella Boneham wrote on X that the closure is a real shame for the city, its history and travel in the West Midlands, and said the airport could have returned to commercial service with domestic and European flights. That view reflects a wider frustration in the area: some local voices wanted the airport kept open for future use, while the land is instead being cleared for a battery gigafactory.

The decision now appears locked in. Once the closure takes effect next year, the airport will not just be quiet for the moment; it will be gone as an aviation site, and the West Midlands will lose one of the few places that still carried a direct memory of its wartime past, its European routes and its last commercial passengers.