Dublin Airport at Collinstown had its inaugural flight on 19 January 1940 to Liverpool. The site of the new airport was a former Royal Air Force base that had been abandoned in 1922 by the British at the foundation of the Irish Free State.
The airport became the base for the new civil airline, Aer Lingus, which had been set up in 1936 and had previously operated flights to London and Liverpool from the military aerodrome at Baldonnel (which was also a former RAF base).
From the end of World War 11, the airport experienced a significant expansion in services. Aer Lingus resumed its London service to Croydon in November 1945 and KLM, the national Dutch air carrier, started the first European flights from Ireland in 1947 with a service to Amsterdam.
Aer Lingus later introduced a flight to Amsterdam and during the late 1940s and early 1950s also operated routes to Brussels and to Rome.
Three additional concrete runways were completed in 1948 to cater for the growing air traffic.
Ten years after it was established, 920,000 passengers had passed through the airport.
The photo was kindly donated by Claire Connolly from Ballinasloe.
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