RAF LEUCHARS will reopen for operational flying next week after a £24 million refurbishment of the main runway and ancillary taxiways at the front-line fighter base.

Air Officer Scotland and RAF Leuchars station commander, Air Commodore Clive Bairsto, will lead the return by piloting in the first plane at noon on Friday.

The three Tornado squadrons based at Leuchars—111, 43, and 56—will be returning from their temporary detachments, which for the past 12 weeks have included rotations between RAF Kinloss in Moray, Leeming in North Yorkshire and Akrotiri in Cyprus.

As the squadrons rotated through RAF Leeming, each took on the Quick Reaction Alert mantle, which saw a number of intercepts of Russian Bear and Backfire bombers.

The air commodore will be met by North East Fife MP Sir Menzies Campbell and, weather permitting, there will be a flypast by four aircraft of 43 Squadron.

Work started on the 2588m runway during the first week in May. Since then 65,000 cubic metres of concrete has been used along with 54000 tonnes of blacktop resurfacing. In addition 600 lights and 750 transformers have been replaced using 130 kilometres of cable.

When the work was at its peak there were 120 personnel working on the project, and they completed 153,209 man-hours as at the end of August, and removed 49,000 tonnes of rubble, much of which was crushed and reused as bottoming.