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
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To a surprising extent the war-lords in shining armour, the apostles of the martial virtues, tend not to die fighting when the time comes. History is full of ignominious getaways by the great and famous.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)