History
The airport originally was operated by the United States Army Air Force. It closed in 1949 as Coolidge Air Force Base and upon the closure it became a civil airport. It was known as Coolidge International Airport until 1985, when it was named in honor of Sir Vere Cornwall Bird (1910–1999), the first prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda.
In December 2005, the Antigua and Barbuda Millennium Airport Corporation announced it would invite tenders to construct the first phase of a new passenger terminal designed to serve the airport for 30 years.
Read more about this topic: V. C. Bird International Airport
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation.”
—Conor Cruise O’Brien (b. 1917)
“If you look at the 150 years of modern China’s history since the Opium Wars, then you can’t avoid the conclusion that the last 15 years are the best 15 years in China’s modern history.”
—J. Stapleton Roy (b. 1935)