History
RSW was first conceived in 1973, when it became apparent that the existing airport in Fort Myers, Page Field, would not be able to accommodate new aircraft and increased traffic. The government of Lee County selected a site near Interstate 75, which was under construction at the time. Groundbreaking was held in 1980, and Southwest Florida Regional Airport opened on schedule, May 14, 1983, with a single 8400-ft runway. Delta Air Lines operated the inaugural flight.
The airport was renamed Southwest Florida International Airport in 1993, although it had hosted international flights since 1984 and U.S. Customs since 1987, primarily for services to Germany. Also in 1993, the runway was lengthened to 12,000 ft (3,658 m), designed to accommodate increased international traffic. However, while the airport has hosted Boeing 747s (and notably, the U.S. President's Air Force One), as of 2009, the largest aircraft to use the airport for regularly scheduled service are the Airbus A330-300s operated by Air Berlin on non stop flights to Düsseldorf.
Read more about this topic: Southwest Florida International Airport
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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 mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,—for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)