Man calls quits after 20 years and $50k on an imaginary airport

Llandegley International Airport, aviation's longest running joke has reached the end of the road. Photo / Llandegley International Airport, Facebook

Llandegley International Airport has exactly 0 arrivals and 0 departures a year, but that hasn’t stopped it being called a “national treasure”.

Now the man behind aviation’s longest running joke says that it has reached its final destination.

Over the past two decades, Nicholas Whitehead has spent £25,000, ($50,000) on the upkeep of a road sign to a fictional airport in the middle of rural Wales.

The billboard outside of Powys village was put up in 2002, promising directions to Terminals 1 and 3. Tourists foolish enough to follow the sign will find the fields conspicuously empty. It is 150km away from the nearest international airstrip.

The journalist and writer, Whitehead has a surreal sense of humour and once worked with Monty Python’s Terry Jones. Talking with the Daily Mail the comic said that the idea for the sign came to him during a “wild conversation” among friends.

“We thought of renting a sign for something that wasn’t really there, possibly a project that didn’t exist, and we settled on the airport,” he told local news .

Llandegley is straight out of a sketch from the Flying Circus.

However the fake airport has cost tens of thousands of pounds to maintain.

£1,500 per year to maintain through the highway agency and maintenance costs, he says it’s the end of the road.

While he will no longer pay for the costly sign, Whitehead hopes that Wales’ national heritage body Cadw will pay for its upkeep.

“I think the airport is established now - and I think the establishment should take it on,” he told the BBC south Wales.

Despite being a work of fiction the airport has taken off online. It has been the subject of viral posts and riff on the running gag. While there was never any tarmac or aircraft, the sign was regularly updated. It was a bouncing board for ideas.

The sign was updated in 2019 in memory of local woman Jill Dibling. Photo / Llandegley International Airport, Facebook

This included a spoof protest against airport expansion “No 2 Runway 2″ and pamphlets for a pretend flying school, advertising lessons “with qualified pretending to fly instructors”.

In 2019 the sign was updated as a tribute to local woman Jill Dibling (Arrived: 1946, Departed: 2019).

“The sign is just a sign. The sign can come down but the airport is still there. The airport exists in the same way that songs exist,” said Whitehead after announcing his intention to stop its upkeep.