Nicosia International Airport (abandoned)

this airport when it was built it was one of the best in europe! (it was built by the british) but now its in the turkish side and it isnt working

Its in the UN buffer zoe, not he Turkish side.

The NIC is in the Buffer Zone and is controlled by the UN. I was based there for a year with the UN in 1999. At that time the only aircraft using it were the Argentinian Air Force with there UN helicopters. I used to go running on the airstrip. There is an old Cyprus Airways jet straddled with bullet hols on the apron and an old Liberator bomber used for fire practice. The terminal is left as it was in 1974.

A marvel of its time
(archive article - Sunday, July 5, 2009)

When it first opened Nicosia’s airport was a miracle of modern architecture that people would visit whether travelling or not. Today it stands empty except for the pigeons, an eerie reminder of what has been lost. ELENI ANTONIOU speaks to a photographer given a rare glimpse of it

Nicosia airport was abandoned during the invasion of 1974. Since then few have had the opportunity to visit the once glamorous building now under UN control in the buffer zone and fewer have been given permission to photograph it. Orestis Lambrou is one of few. After spending a day at the deserted airport, he tells the story of a place frozen in time.

In August last year Orestis, a 27-year old photographer and Goldsmith’s University student, was granted permission to spend a day at the capital’s airport. “I told them I was working on a project,” he says. “I am fascinated by abandoned buildings no matter where they are. The airport in Nicosia just happened to be the most fascinating in Cyprus because of its history. Not many airports in the world were simply abandoned especially ones that did not run their cycle.” NIC, as the airport was known, used to be the principal airport for Cyprus from its initial construction in the 1930s as the Royal Air Force station RAF Nicosia until 1974. At first it acted principally as a military airport. During WWII the airport’s facilities and runway were extended and American bombers used the runway in 1943-44 when returning from the allied bombings of Romanian oil fields. The RAF quit the airfield in 1966 due to limited space brought on by vastly increasing civilian aircraft movements. The purpose-built passenger terminal that stands empty today was completed in 1968 bringing the total of operating years to just six. The airport was, in all senses, brand new.

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