Grand Isle International Airport: Difference between revisions

Originally a private airfield built in the 1920s by the eccentric inventor Eouard Eouse, the land served as a testing ground for his experimentations in both fixed and rotary wing flight. In the 1940s he died in a crash of one of his ill-fated inventions and his widow sold the airstrip and outbuildings to the burgeoning Army Air Branch as a flight school. With the restructuring of the [[Navy of Burgundie]] the field was transferred to them. By the late 1950s, a bigger base was needed and [[Navy of Burgundie#Bases|St. Mattius Naval Airfield]] was built a few kilometers away. The strip lay dormant until 1961 when the Chamber of Commerce of Mattiusvale took a leap of faith and offered to buy it to build a passenger aerodrome to profit from the overflow at both the [[Vilauristre]] and [[Port Diteaux]] city airports. In [[1962]] an agreement was reached and the city was allowed to lease the land from the [[Navy of Burgundie|Navy]] for 25 years, at which point the Navy would do an assessment to see if they could sell the property outright. In the spring of [[1963]], construction teams broke ground to create a new runway and a terminal building. The airport opened on May 17, [[1964]] and the first three flights to [[Dormanshire]], [[Le Ax-Canbon]], and [[Kuhlfros|Adenborough]] were packed. In fact the flight to [[Le Ax-Canbon]] was so full that the plane had to return because it was overweight.