Liverpool John Lennon Airport handled 5.6 million passengers in 2025, the most in its 92-year history and 11% up on 2024. The year before had already been its busiest since 2011, lifted by Jet2 basing aircraft at the airport and by easyJet and Ryanair adding routes.

The passenger record is the headline. The more interesting things are on the ground: the airport sits on the grounds of a Tudor manor, holds the Battle of Britain's fastest kill in its logbook, and turned its old terminal into a hotel you can book a room in.

The fastest kill of the Battle of Britain

Before it flew easyJet holidaymakers, the site was RAF Speke. On 8 October 1940, a day before John Lennon was born a few miles north, Flight Lieutenant Denys Gillam took off in a Hawker Hurricane and found a Junkers Ju 88 crossing straight in front of him. He shot it down while his undercarriage was still retracting. By his own account the whole sortie, take-off to landing, took about eight minutes, and it is widely regarded as the fastest air-to-air kill of the Battle of Britain, possibly ever. The credit was shared with two Czechoslovak pilots, Alois Vašátko and Josef Stehlík of 312 Squadron, newly based at Speke. Robert Taylor later painted the moment as Fastest Victory.

Speke did more than defend Merseyside. Rootes ran a shadow factory here that built Bristol Blenheims and more than 1,000 Handley Page Halifax bombers, and Lockheed assembled American aircraft, P-51 Mustangs among them, that had arrived in pieces through the Liverpool docks.

A Tudor hall and an Art Deco terminal

The airport is built on the estate of Speke Hall, a timber-framed Tudor house from the 1500s that still stands nearby, now a National Trust property. Its 1930s passenger terminal, the one in newsreels of Beatles fans mobbing the terraces, is a Grade II listed Art Deco building. When flights moved to the current terminal in 2002, the old one became the Crowne Plaza hotel, so you can now sleep on the original apron, where the Speke Aerodrome Heritage Group restores vintage aircraft.

Naming it after Lennon

In 2001 Liverpool became the first UK airport named after a person. The change was made official in 2002 alongside a £42.5 million terminal, and Yoko Ono unveiled Tom Murphy's seven-foot bronze of a striding Lennon inside. A Yellow Submarine sculpture went up at the entrance in 2005. Across the terminal roof, for arriving pilots, is the airport's motto: "Above us only sky," a line from Imagine.

Seeing it for yourself

Most of it is still on show, and you don't need a boarding pass. Tom Murphy's Lennon statue stands in the check-in hall, and the Yellow Submarine sits on the roundabout as you drive in. The old Art Deco terminal is the Crowne Plaza now, so you can book a room over the original apron and look out on the aircraft the Speke Aerodrome Heritage Group keeps there. Speke Hall, the Tudor house the airport grew up around, is next door and open most of the year through the National Trust. The airport sits off the A561 in south Liverpool, and the 500 Airport Express runs there from Liverpool ONE and Lime Street in about half an hour.