History
GMU opened in 1928 and was initially named Greenville Municipal Airport. In 1930 it received its first airmail flight; Eastern Airlines began scheduled flights in the late 1930s and Delta Airlines arrived in 1945.
During World War II the United States Army Air Force used the airfield for training. The airport was used jointly by the Army Air Forces Flying Training Command, Southeast Training Center (later Eastern Flying Training Command) as a contract glider training school, operated by Southern Airways, Inc from 1941 until mid-1943. The airport was then reassigned to Air Technical Service Command and used as a supply and maintenance depot until being returned to full civil control in October 1945.
In 1954 Charles Lindbergh dedicated the new terminal. Until 1962 GMU (then GRL) was the commercial airport for the Greenville area; in April 1957 it had 13 weekday departures on Eastern, four on Delta and four on Southern. Eastern had one nonstop to Richmond, but no other nonstops out of Greenville exceeded 200 miles.
The airport was replaced by the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport which opened October 15, 1962. It was from this airport that the fatal flight of the Lynyrd Skynyrd Convair 240 departed on October 20, 1977. The recently renovated terminal won a national award.
Read more about this topic: Greenville Downtown Airport
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“America is, therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s history shall reveal itself. It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of Old Europe.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The only history is a mere question of one’s struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)