History
Air transportation at the site of present day airport, then known as Seawell Airport, goes back as far as the late 1930s. In 1939 a plane from KLM Royal Dutch Airlines landed on the airport site. At the time there was merely a grassy strip as the runway. The strip was paved some time later and in 1949 the first Terminal building was built on the site, to replace a shed that was being used until then. This ushered in the Airport being formally known as the Seawell Airport.
During the 1960s the eastern flight-range just south-east of the airport became known as Paragon. This area of the airport became the initial base of a High Altitude Research Project known as Project HARP, Project HARP was jointly sponsored by McGill University in Canada and the United States military.
In 1983, the U.S.-sponsored invasion of Grenada prompted the United States to form yet another agreement with Barbados. As part of the deal, the U.S. expanded a part of the current airport infrastructure. This prepared Grantley Adams Airport to be used as a base. As part of the plan to maintain for lasting stability in Grenada, the United States also assisted in the establishment of the Regional Security System (RSS) at the eastern Grantley Adams airport flight-rage. The R.S.S. was (and still is) a security unit focused on providing security for the Eastern Caribbean.
Grantley Adams International Airport, as it is known today, handles most large aircraft including Boeing 747s. The airport was also one of the few destinations in the world where British Airways' Concorde aircraft made regularly scheduled flights, and also for repairs, before Concorde was retired. The flight time of Concorde from the United Kingdom to Barbados was less than 4 hours. The first Concorde visit to Barbados was in 1977 for the Queen's Silver Jubilee. During the 1980s, the Concorde returned for commercial flights to Barbados and thereafter flew to Barbados during the busy winter season. On 17 October 2011, ZA006, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner arrived at BGI for testing. This was followed by an 24 October arrival of the Boeing 747-8i for further high humidity environment testing.
Read more about this topic: Aviation In Barbados
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“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)