It's Scotland's busiest airport, handling around 14 million passengers and welcoming thousands of commercial flights every year, but the modern-day Edinburgh Airport would still be an airbase if not for the outbreak of the Second World War.
Opened as RAF Turnhouse in 1918, what is now Edinburgh Airport remained under military control until 1947, with the launch of its first commercial flights and has expanded as a passenger airport ever since.
And yet the Turnhouse facility had never been intended for passenger aircraft. In the late 1930s, just prior to Britain entering the war, plans were afoot to open a civil airport for Edinburgh more than 17 miles away at Macmerry Aerodrome in East Lothian.
READ MORE: Photos show how Edinburgh Airport has changed in 100 years
The Air Ministry's proposals envisaged the 88 acre site at Macmerry, a large field situated between Tranent and Haddington that had been used as a landing ground during the First World War, being transformed into the capital's first passenger airport.
The 1930s was the dawn of commercial air travel, and while only the very wealthy could afford to travel in such a manner, the Edinburgh authorities were keen to keep step with other major UK cities, such as London, Birmingham and Liverpool which already had civil airports.
In June 1938, the Air Ministry's plan for Macmerry, which was used by the Edinburgh Flying Club and was already welcoming limited passenger traffic between London and Perth, received approval.
A report in The Scotsman outlined the various reasons why Macmerry was the perfect location for such an endeavour, pointing out among other things that the site was suitably far enough away from the capital and its numerous smoke-producing chimney stalks which would have an adverse effect on visibility for pilots.
It read: "The [Macmerry] aerodrome is favourably regarded by visiting pilots because of the absence of ground obstructions in the vicinity. The smoke nuisance is also non-existent at Macmerry.
Sign up to our Edinburgh Live nostalgia newsletters for more local history and heritage content straight to your inbox
"On its northern boundaries, the fields slope gently towards the Firth of Forth, and, situated in flat country, the aerodrome is regarded as being excellently situated for the installation of the latest types of radio direction-finding apparatus."
The report ended: "The area surrounding the present landing ground permits runways to be extended as the occasion should arise."
But while Macmerry looked a dead cert to be transformed into a civil airport, history would have other plans.
Passenger air travel ground to a halt with the outbreak of war the following September and the proposal to develop Macmerry would ultimately be scrapped. For the duration of the Second World War, RAF Macmerry was used as a satellite airfield to the nearby RAF Drem and RAF East Fortune and was also home to a number of squadrons.
By the late 1940s, RAF Turnhouse emerged as the Air Ministry's clear favourite to be reimagined as a civil airport and East Lothian's chance to boast what would become Scotland's busiest airport hub was gone forever.
Flying would resume for a brief spell at Macmerry, but the airfield closed in 1953 and was rarely used again.
Given how close Macmerry was to becoming Edinburgh's first passenger airport, there is little to see at the former airfield today. The site of the airport that never was is split by the A1 road, with much of the old landing ground now used for agricultural purposes.
READ NEXT
Street photos of Edinburgh in the 1950s and 60s go on show for the first time
Mind-blowing Edinburgh snaps from the swinging sixties show a changing city
Life in post-war Edinburgh revealed in fascinating 1940s footage
Edinburgh’s scorching summers down the decades in stunning throwback snaps
