History
At the time of the creation of Pakistan, Walton Airport was the main airport of Lahore. When Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) acquired jet aircraft such as Boeing 720s, however, Walton was unable to handle the large aircraft. The Government of Pakistan thus decided to build a brand new airport, which opened in 1962 as Lahore International Airport and was able to handle aircraft as large as the Boeing 747.
Over the course of the next 25 years the demand for air travel rose. It meant that the government decided to build a new world class airport to meet the growing needs for the future and improve the facilities for passengers since the old airport was becoming obsolete. In 2003, Allama Iqbal International Airport was inaugurated and is now the second largest airport in Pakistan after Jinnah International Karachi. All flights were switched to the new airport and the old airport was passed onto the military. However, during the Hajj period, the old airport is used as the Hajj Terminal by the national carrier, PIA.
Read more about this topic: Allama Iqbal International Airport
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)