A major road now crosses this bypass, running across former airfield land and linking Filton and Patchway to Cribbs Causeway.

The airfield had a United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority Ordinary Licence (number P741) allowing flights for the public transport of passengers or for flying instruction as authorised by the licensee.

Following a review of its commercial viability, the last owners, BAE Systems Aviation Services Limited, decided to close the airfield for business effective 31 December 2012.

BAE left the site, selling parts of the industrial buildings and land to Airbus, who have expanded their presence there.

The First World War buildings on the military base were wooden huts, but eventually more permanent structures were erected, including Barnwell Hall.

A flying school was located beside the airfield runway, and the site eventually became part of the Engine Division of the Bristol Aeroplane Company.

[10] Until the war, there was a belief that German bombers had insufficient range to reach Filton; however, the invasion of France by the Nazis in 1940 changed the situation.

[14] After the Second World War, the concrete runway at Filton Aerodrome was extended westwards by John Laing & Son to enable the huge Bristol Brabazon airliner to take off safely.

During the late 1940s and early 1950s, BAC branched out into the development and production of pre-fabricated buildings, plastics, helicopters, guided weapons, luxury cars, gas turbines and ramjet motors.

As a protest, one of the pilots flew his aircraft under the Clifton Suspension Bridge, but he crashed into a hillside on the Leigh Woods side of the Avon Gorge, near Sea Mills, Bristol, and was killed.

Maintenance flights to Filton ceased when suitable hangars were completed at London Heathrow Airport.

On 4 February 1971, Rolls-Royce were declared bankrupt due to the burden of development of the RB211 engine for the Lockheed L-1011 Tristar jetliner.

Due to the importance of Rolls-Royce engine division to the Royal Air Force, the Government nationalised the company.

Frederick Corfield the then local MP, was then Minister for Aviation, and presumably had influence over what was an unusual decision for a Conservative administration.

Although he managed to take-off and eventually land successfully elsewhere, the jet blast from the aircraft's four Bristol Siddeley Olympus 201 engines severely damaged a filling station at the eastern end of the runway, sent cars spinning on the A38 trunk road and wrecked the boundary fence steel railings.

Eyewitnesses claimed that the aircraft barely cleared the engine test beds next to the Bristol to South Wales railway embankment.

The length of the runway and its closed-to-passengers status made it an ideal dispersion site for the nation's airborne nuclear deterrent during the Cold War.

[18] On 3 December 1962, Bristol Siddeley Engines were using Vulcan XA894 as a flying test bed for the Olympus 22R, which was designed to power the ill-fated BAC TSR-2 bomber.

There was also a shorter concrete runway at Filton with a roughly north–south orientation, which was sometimes used by a Dakota to ferry key BAC personnel to Fairford during Concorde development in the early 1970s.

On 21 November 2006, a public inquiry meeting was held with South Gloucestershire Council to discuss the building of 2,200 homes on the airfield (Patchway section).

[27] Built in 1936 as headquarters for the Bristol Aeroplane Company, the large Art Deco office building has sculptures, plaster panels and foyer flooring by Denis Dunlop.

Next to the A38 road, Airbus UK purchased 26 acres (110,000 m2) of the former Rolls-Royce Rodney Works in order to build a facility for wing development and manufacture, which was completed following the granting of planning permission by South Gloucestershire Council in 2016.

[4][28] The following units were here at some point:[29] Sections of the land that made up Filton Airfield were sold by BAE Systems for £120 million.