Nottingham East Midlands Airport (IATA airport code: EMA, ICAO airport code: EGNX) is an airport in the East Midlands of England, near Castle Donington. It lies between the cities of Derby, Leicester and Nottingham.
The airport is used by many charter airlines like Air Scandic , Britannia Airways, First Choice Airways, Thomas Cook Airlines, and MyTravel Airways.
Nottingham East Midlands Airport has seen the growth of the low cost carriers with more routes being added every year. Low cost carriers flying in and out of NEMA are Easyjet, BMIBaby, Ryanair.
The airport was originally a Royal Air Force station, RAF Castle Donington, which was decommissioned and purchsed by a consortium of local government authorities who named it East Midlands Airport to reflect the area it served. Effectively, it replaced the smaller Derby Airport at Burnaston, which soon closed and was eventually redeveloped into a Toyota factory.
In 2004 it was renamed to Nottingham East Midlands Airport because many people from outside the UK did not know precisely where the region is. The move caused some controversy, as the airport is actually in Leicestershire, and the closest city is Derby (it also has a Derby postcode and area code). Furthermore, there is already an airport named Nottingham Airport (which is really in Nottingham).
The airport has gone through a few expansion plans, and boasts a Control Tower that will cover the airports growth over the years. DHL built a Cargo Terminal at one end of the airport and uses East Midlands as a hub for it operations.
It has good access from the M1 and M42 motorways, and Midland Mainline have plans to build a railway station, East Midlands Parkway (following the same name-style as Luton Airport Parkway and Southampton Airport Parkway ), near the airport.
The Kegworth Air Disaster occurred in 1989, when a diverted plane making an emergency landing touched down short of the runway.
The airport mainly serves short haul destinations in Europe but has long haul flights that have been operated by the charter airlines. A major development towards the long haul programme came in 2005 with the introduction of flights to the Dominican Republic, Orlando and Cancun by the charter airline First Choice Airways on behalf of its tour operations from the First Choice Group
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