IT WAS a very long weekend for Ronald A. Read, who had had to get by on only five hours' sleep. He hadn't, in fact, had a holiday for a couple of years. But his labours, and those of his team, were rewarded when he saw hundreds of sightseers being drawn to see what had been created.

On Monday, May 2, 1966 – fifty-five years ago – Glasgow Airport took over operations from Renfrew Airport. The decision to replace Renfrew with a new airport at Abbotsinch had been taken by the Government in November 1960. Construction work had started in May 1965.

The new airport was not quite ready, that day at the beginning of May 1966. There were, here and there, understandable minor snags: a shortage of porters, telephone boxes that did not quite function properly; and tradesmen were still at work in the terminal building at 6.30am, half-an-hour before the first passenger arrived.

Still, it all went well. "One would have expected a large number of snags moving into a new £5 million airport", Mr Read, the airport director, said, "but there were a lot fewer than I had imagined under the circumstances".

Mr Read, like many of his senior colleagues at Glasgow Airport, were steeped in aviation. He had joined the RAF in 1940, the same year as the Battle of Britain, and he became a bomber pilot, serving in Wellingtons, Halifaxes and Lancasters. By the time he left the service in 1946 he had become a squadron leader, with the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Post-war, he had worked in civil aviation all over the world – including bush-flying in British Guiana – before being appointed to head the new airport at Abbotsinch. He was still only 44. Glasgow, he said, was "the most challenging [job] I have ever encountered ... the challenge at Abbotsinch will be here a long time yet".

His deputy, Eric Garner, was himself a former war-time bomber pilot, flying with the Coastal and Training Commands. The new airport's ground services controller, Don Corry, had also served in bombers during the war, as a bomb-aimer air-gunner. He had had a phenomenally busy time getting the new facility off the ground.

The Glasgow Corporation-owned airport had 150 aircraft movements on that first day, many of them by British European Airways (BEA), who took the occasion to announce that 1,665,000 seats would be provided on Scotland-London routes that summer, 950,000 of them from Glasgow.

Captain Eric Starling, BEA's flight manager, who piloted the very first airliner to touch down at Glasgow, said: "The runway at Renfrew was cracking up. I doubt if it would have lasted another month, so we are thankful that Abbotsinch opened up on time. If Renfrew had gone on, the runway would have been closed down for repairs".

The Glasgow Herald reported that Captain Starling was flying a charter Viscount from Edinburgh, carrying 64 members of the staff of Sir Basil Spence, Glover and Ferguson, architects of the airport.

The very first passenger to check into the new terminal building was Peter Boyd, a 38-year-old chief industrial engineer with the Stephen's shipyard at Linthouse, Glasgow. He was making a routine business trip to London, but reached the airport fully 75 minutes before his departure time. "I felt like a VIP with all those airline staff standing by, apparently waiting to greet me, " he told reporters.

Meanwhile, early-morning mist reduced visibility for the pilots of incoming aircraft. The first Comet on the BEA new domestic service was brought in by radar. The pilot, Captain David Jack, said that visibility was down to some 2,000 metres. "Landing aids are not available yet", he added. "We were using radar".

Hours after the airport opened for business, it was thronged with sightseers and business travellers. Among the people reported to have been spotted in the crowds were the actor, John Cairney, the actress Kathy Kay, and a clutch of MPs, bound for the House of Commons.

The former Scottish Secretary of State, Michael Noble, was travelling by BUA to Gatwick. "This", he said, "is the first opportunity I've had to see the airport since it was just a series of potholes and skeleton construction".

Four Labour MPs were also heading for London, among them Norman Buchan (West Renfrewshire), who said he would be monitoring the issue of aircraft noise so far as it affected the residents of Paisley, "to see if there is a case for compensation to soundproof homes as in the London area".

Next to him was the Central Ayrshire MP Archie Manuel, who was among those who had campaigned for Prestwick to remain as Scotland's international airport. He said he hoped that the new airport would not become "the thin edge of the wedge" for Prestwick. This had been something of a sore point in Ayrshire.

The need for a new airport for Glasgow had been obvious for many years.

Renfrew Airport, which had been developed during the Great War for the Royal Flying Corps (which merged with the Royal Naval Air Service in 1918 to become the Royal Air Force), was deemed to be incapable of expansion.

The choice of Abbotsinch, formerly an RAF station and, now, a Fleet Air Arm base, HMS Sanderling, made sense.

In July 1960 the Aviation Minister, Duncan Sandys, told the House of Commons: "The surrounding buildings and docks will make it difficult to provide at Renfrew satisfactory facilities to meet the anticipated future requirements of air traffic.

"I am therefore considering whether a suitable airport for Glasgow could be provided elsewhere, possibly at the Naval Airfield at Abbotsinch, in the event of the Admiralty deciding to give it up. In any case, Renfrew Airport will continue in operation for the next three years".

That November, the final decision to make Abbotsinch the airport for Glasgow was announced in the Commons by Peter Thorneycroft, the new Minister for Aviation. There had been widespread agreement that Abbotsinch was the best choice, but authorities in Ayrshire were far from happy. Ayr County's convener, Daniel Sim, asserted that it would have cost some £300,000 to adapt Prestwick to take Renfrew's services, and up to £1 million to turn Abbotsinch into a civil airport.

Sir Patrick Dollan, a former Lord Provost of Glasgow who now chaired the Scottish Council on Civil Aviation, strongly rejected Ayrshire claims that he had "misled" Mr Thorneycroft. He said the STUC and the Chambers of Commerce were among those who had unanimously backed Abbotsinch, and added that Glasgow had thought about using it as the city's airport as far back as 1922.

As late as May 1963 Emrys Hughes, MP for South Ayrshire, urged a junior aviation minister to bear in mind "that if Prestwick were made the alternative to Abbotsinch many millions of pounds would be saved, that this is an airport which is fog-free and whose access to Glasgow could be so accelerated as to make the difference in time only a matter of minutes?"

But the Glasgow plan forged ahead, and Renfrew and its elegant buildings were gradually no more. Part of the M8 motorway, between junctions 26 and 27, is said to be the site of, or close to, runway 08/26.

"Today there is little to remind the thousands of motorists using the M8 that there ever was an airport at Renfrew", writes the former pilot, Bill Innes, in his book, Flight from the Croft. "However, if westbound passengers look to their left, they can still see the cemetery which rather ominously dominated the view for the departing air passengers".

* Tomorrow: How the airport grew