History
The airport was officially opened on 30 May 1986, however the first commercial flights operated seven months earlier on 25 October 1985 in the form of three Aer Lingus charter flights to Rome. The opening followed a long campaign by Monsignor James Horan. The airport was intended to bring employment to an impoverished corner of Ireland, as well as allow pilgrims to visit the nearby Roman Catholic Knock Shrine which commemorates an apparition of the Virgin Mary in 1879.
Ryanair commenced flights to London Luton during 1986, with a route to London Stansted added in 1992. By 1988, over 100,000 passengers had passed through the airport. In 1995 Aer Lingus commenced flights to Birmingham.
On 1 June 2003, hundreds of people gathered at Knock International Airport to view a Boeing 747 land with 500 returning pilgrims from Lourdes.
Read more about this topic: Ireland West Airport Knock
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Spain is an overflow of sombreness ... a strong and threatening tide of history meets you at the frontier.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1874–1945)