IN 1931 Yeadon was just grassy fields and moorland next to the A658 Leeds to Harrogate road.

Now it’s a vibrant, go-ahead airport that’s a hub of holiday and business activity with thousands of Huddersfield people using it every year.

The first aerodrome was established there in October 1931 when the Yorkshire Aeroplane Club moved to Yeadon from its site at Sherburn-in-Elmet. The first aircraft to fly from there were Cirrus Moths and the Gypsy Moths.

But the aim was always to have commercial flights from there and the first exotic location was ... Blackpool. In 1936 a seasonal air service to the west coast resort started with De Havilland DH84 Dragon planes and by the end of the year flights were also destined for the Isle Of Man, but stopped at Liverpool on the way. The following year an air taxi service was formed at Yeadon which gave businessmen and aviation enthusiasts the chance to fly almost anywhere in the country for the princely sum of 4d per person per mile – and in 1938 the airport handled 1,552 passengers.

The airport had a military presence from 1936 when 609 Auxiliary Squadron, which became known as the West Riding Squadron, was based there. A week before the outbreak of the Second World War it received its first Spitfires but immediately left Yeadon for Catterick.

Yeadon never had a frontline operational role during the war but was still important.

It was home to No 4 Bomber Group Central Maintenance Organisation to carry out major overhauls on aircraft including Whitley, Wellington and Halifax bombers. From March 1941 Yeadon was also used as a training school and the thousands of pilots who passed through learned their skills in Tiger Moths.

But at the north end of the airport next to the Harrogate road a vast factory was constructed where Lancaster bombers were built for the onslaught against Germany. The factory’s main area was underground, built of reinforced concrete and covered with earth to withstand bombing raids. It was mentioned a few times in propaganda broadcasts by Lord Haw Haw, but the German bombers never managed to pinpoint its exact location and the fist Lancaster rolled off the production line in April 1942.

At its peak in April 1944 it employed almost 11,000 people – 53% of them women – and the Lancasters’ engines and controls were tested as they taxied up and down the Yeadon runway. By the end of the war the factory was producing 40 Lancasters a month and the total built at Yeadon was 688.

In the 1950s and 1960s the Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen Families Association held annual air displays at Yeadon, attracting crowds of almost 100,000 spectators, but these ended in the early 1960s as the airport became busier with civil flying.

In January 1959 Yeadon was renamed Leeds Bradford Airport and slowly began to expand with a new terminal building completed in 1968, capable of handling more than 400 passengers an hour with regular flights both in the UK and favourite continental tourist spots such as Barcelona and Palma in Spain.

The 1970s proved a tougher decade when the Government rejected its runway expansion plans and it wasn’t until 1980 that there was a £25m investment into the airport to bring it into line with other major airports in the UK. This included a new terminal and one of the runways was extended by 2,000ft.

But in May 1985 shortly after this runway opened, a British Airways Lockheed Tristar from Palma with 416 crew and passengers on board ran off the end of the runway in wet, slippery and blustery conditions. Everyone escaped OK.

Moving into the modern era, Jet2.com was launched in February 2003 with a twice daily Leeds to Amsterdam service. Within weeks, further routes were introduced to Alicante, Barcelona, Malaga, Palma and Nice.

And in August 2008 the Yorkshire Air Ambulance moved its base from Sheffield City Airport to Leeds Bradford.