Grand Isle International Airport

Port dell'aire internacional de Gran Isle (Eng: Grand Isle International Airport) is the main airport for the Ile Burgundie. Originally built to supplement the overtaxed regional airports of Vilauristre and Port Diteaux in the mid 1960s, the airport exploded in growth when the City of Vilauristre Transportation Commission lost a pair of lawsuits in the mid 1980s, against residents complaining about the air pollution from increased air traffic and another after a crash in an adjoining neighborhood killed 16 people and destroyed 46 houses. Consumers from metro-Vilauristre started flocking to Mattiusvale to protest the Vilauristre airport and to take advantage of the lower fares. In 2004, Vilauristre International Airport filed for bankruptcy and Mattiusvale International absorbed the assets, creating the Grand Isle Mass Transit Authority. By 2016 the airport's total area was 33,531 acres (13,570 ha, 52.4 sq mi), making it the largest in The Burgundies and amongst the largest in the world. It is one of the few airports that serve commercial supersonic air travel. It is a massive employer on the Ile Burgundie with a social and economic impact on 146,600 people.

Grand Isle International Airport Port dell'aire internacional de Gran Isle
ATRO: GIB – ICAO: NGIB
Summary
Airport type	Public
Owner/Operator	Grand Isle Mass Transit Authority
Serves	Ile Burgundie Mattiusvale Port Diteaux Vilauristre
Opened	1964
Hub for	AiReal
Elevation AMSL	168 ft / 51 m
Map
Aerial footage of the runways and terminals of GIB
Runways
Direction Length Surface ft m 7/25 12,000 3,658 Concrete 8/26 12,000 3,658 Concrete 16L/34R 12,000 3,658 Concrete 16R/34L 16,000 4,877 Concrete 17L/35R 12,000 3,658 Concrete 17R/35L 12,000 3,658 Concrete
Statistics (2017)
Aircraft operations 582,486 Passengers 61,379,396 Economic impact (2013) $26.3 billion

History

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 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 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, L'Ax-Canbon, and Adenborough were packed. In fact the flight to L'Ax-Canbon was so full that the plane had to return because it was overweight.

Facilities

Passenger Terminal

Grand Isle Passenger Terminal Building
Terminus de Passatgers de Gran Isle
Error creating thumbnail: File missing Grand Isle Passenger terminal atrium
Former names	Port dell'Aire Structure Gran Isle
General information
Type	Airport terminal
Architectural style	Art Nouveau
Country	Burgundie
Groundbreaking	1963
Renovated	2019
Technical details
Floor count	14
Lifts/elevators	26
Other information
Parking	15,547