Aerospace group Bombardier has sold Belfast City Airport to Spanish construction and services group Ferrovial for £35 million sterling (€48.5 million).
The Canadian group announced last September that it was looking for a buyer for the airport as part of wider process of cost cuts and the disposal of non-core assets.
Belfast City handles around 1.8 million passengers a year on flights to other parts of Britain and competes with Belfast International Airport on the other side of the city. It has recently had a £28 million sterling upgrade to its terminal building.
The airport has been profitable and succeeded in tempting British Midland to move its operations from Belfast International in 2001. Belfast City employs some 360 staff. It also facilitates a further 450 airline and ground staff. Aer Arann will shortly commence a daily service between Dublin and Belfast City.
The airport was originally a subsidiary of Shorts Brothers, the aircraft manufacturer acquired by Bombardier in 1989.
Bombardier tried to sell the airport in 1996 but the deal fell through and the British Monopolies and Mergers Commission found that TBI, owners of Belfast International Airport, Luton and Cardiff airports, should not buy it.
Following the sale, Bombardier will employ 5,700 people in the North, working on the design and manufacture of aircraft.
The company has been struggling to secure sufficient contracts for its operations in Northern Ireland and has shed several thousand jobs in recent years. However, it announced earlier this month that it had won a contract for 275 regional aircraft from US Airways that would secure the jobs in the North.
The deal gives Ferrovial a concession to run the airport until 2114 and fits into its policy of steadily expanding its airport management business.
"Belfast City Airport has scope to increase revenues from aeronautics and non-aeronautic sources by developing the airport's commercial activities," said Mr Luiz Sánchez Salmerón, head of Ferrovial's airports division.
The airport acquisition is Ferrovial's second investment in Ireland in recent months. Its subsidiary Cintra Concesiones was part of the Eurolink consortium that last March won the €420 million contract to build and run the State's first motorway to be built by public-private partnership - the 39-kilometre road between Kilcock and Kinnegad - which is due for completion in late 2006.
Ferrovial was part of a consortium that bought Sydney airport last year and in 2001 it took a 50 per cent stake in the British airport of Bristol. It also has stakes in nine Mexican airports and owns the Chilean airport of Antofagasta.
