About
Before Heathrow and before Gatwick, London's airport was at Croydon, and almost everything about how international air travel works was invented there. Formed from two First World War airfields and opened as the capital's customs airport in 1920, Croydon received in 1928 the world's first purpose-designed airport terminal — Airport House, a confident neo-classical building with an integrated control tower that established the template every airport since has followed.
The list of things that began here is genuinely startling.
Air traffic control as a discipline was developed at Croydon, along with the use of radio position-fixing to guide aircraft, the practice of giving airports and airlines standard call signs, and the distress call mayday, coined here by a radio officer looking for a word that would be intelligible to both English and French speakers.
Imperial Airways flew the routes that stitched the British Empire together from these buildings, taking days to reach Cape Town or Karachi in aircraft that carried a handful of passengers in wicker seats. Amy Johnson departed from Croydon for Australia in 1930, and Charles Lindbergh landed here after his Atlantic crossing to a crowd that broke through the barriers.
The airport also had a serious wartime role in the Battle of Britain as RAF Croydon and was heavily bombed. It closed in 1959, unable to expand and outgrown by jet aircraft, and the site was developed for housing and offices — but the terminal survived. The Historic Croydon Airport Trust now runs a visitor centre inside it, and access is deliberately limited: the building opens on the first Sunday of each month, and visitors go round on a pre-booked guided tour that includes the museum and the control tower.
That restriction is central to planning a visit, and tickets typically go on sale about four weeks ahead. It is also a sensible compromise rather than an obstacle: the terminal is otherwise let as working offices, and keeping it in commercial use is what has funded its survival and kept a listed building occupied rather than derelict.
What the tour delivers in return is unusual access.
Visitors go through the booking hall, into the museum and up into the control tower itself, guided by volunteers whose knowledge of the airport's operational history is considerable.
Standing in the room where controllers first worked out how to keep aircraft apart using radio bearings, looking over ground that is now housing and light industry, does something that no display case manages: it makes an entire vanished world of aviation — wicker seats, week-long flights to Africa, crowds pressing against the barriers to see a pilot land — briefly and concretely present.
Categories:
Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- This is the essential fact: the visitor centre opens on the FIRST SUNDAY of each month only. The building is closed to visitors on every other day of the year.
- Book in advance. Tickets normally go on sale around four weeks before each open day, popular dates sell out, and the walk-in price on the day is higher than the advance rate.
- Access is by guided tour, not free-flow browsing, so allow the full tour length and expect to move with a group.
- The annual pass costs the same as a single adult ticket, which makes it worth taking if there is any chance you will return.
- Note that the control tower is reached by stairs and cannot be adapted, so wheelchair users will see the terminal and museum but not the tower. Raise this when booking.
- Look at the aircraft and memorial outside on Purley Way before or after the tour — they are on public display and accessible at any time.
- Arrive by tram to Waddon Marsh or bus along Purley Way if you would rather not drive; free parking is available at Airport House on open days.
- Ask the guides about the mayday story and the earliest air traffic control procedures. They are volunteers with real depth on the subject.
Highlights
The world's first purpose-built airport terminal
Airport House, opened in 1928, was the first building anywhere designed from the outset as an airport terminal, integrating booking hall, customs, offices and control tower into a single structure. Before it, air passengers were handled in adapted huts and hangars. Every airport terminal since descends from the thinking worked out here: that departing and arriving passengers need to be separated, processed and moved through a controlled sequence.
The building survives largely intact, in neo-classical style with a booking hall of real dignity, and standing in it is the single best reason to visit.
The control tower
Croydon's control tower is where air traffic control was effectively invented as a discipline. Controllers here developed the use of radio direction-finding to fix an aircraft's position and pass it to the pilot, established the practice of separating traffic in a structured way, and worked out the procedures that became international standards.
The tour goes up into the tower, where the equipment and the view over what was the airfield make the problem the controllers faced concrete: aircraft with limited instruments, poor weather and no way of seeing one another.
The origin of mayday
The international distress call was coined at Croydon. A senior radio officer was asked to devise a word that would be unmistakable in an emergency and intelligible to both English and French speakers, given that much of the airport's traffic ran to Paris; he proposed mayday, from the French m'aidez.
It was adopted internationally and remains in use worldwide by air and sea.
Few museums can point to a word in daily global use and say it was invented in this building, and the story reliably surprises visitors who assume it has some nautical origin.
Imperial Airways and the empire routes
Imperial Airways operated from Croydon the routes that connected Britain to India, Africa, the Middle East and Australia, and the reality of that travel is startling by modern standards: journeys of many days, staged through a chain of intermediate stops and overnight hotels, in aircraft carrying perhaps twenty passengers in considerable but slow comfort.
The museum documents the airline, its aircraft, its uniformed staff and its passengers, and treats the empire context directly.
This was air travel as an instrument of imperial administration and commerce as much as of leisure.
Collections
The collection interprets Croydon's role as London's principal airport between 1920 and 1959 and as the birthplace of much of modern civil aviation practice. Holdings cover the development of air traffic control and radio direction-finding, the origin of the mayday distress call, and the standardisation of airport and airline call signs.
Material relates to Imperial Airways and the empire air routes, the aircraft and airlines that used the airport, the interwar record flights including Amy Johnson's 1930 departure for Australia and Charles Lindbergh's 1927 arrival, and the airport's wartime service as RAF Croydon during the Battle of Britain.
Photographs, documents, uniforms, instruments, models, signage and personal effects support the interpretation. The principal asset is Airport House itself, opened in 1928 as the world's first purpose-designed airport terminal, together with its integrated control tower.
The Terminal and Control Tower
Airport House and its 1928 control tower, interpreted on the guided tour, covering the invention of air traffic control, radio position-fixing and the mayday call.
Croydon in the Air Age
Museum displays on Imperial Airways and the empire routes, interwar record flights, the airport's passengers and staff, and its wartime role as RAF Croydon.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.