Special Aircraft
August 1998 - A South African Airways Boeing 747-400 landed at Port Elizabeth Airport to be officially named 'Ibayhi' the Xhosa word for Port Elizabeth. The aircraft landed with crew and a number of passengers on board and carrying minimal fuel so as to make a safe landing on the 1980m runway.
17 May 2004 - John Travolta landed his personal Qantas Boeing 707 at the airport directly from Mauritius as he was visiting a nearby private game reserve.
1 February 2008 - King Abdullah II of Jordan's Airbus A340-200 landed at Port Elizabeth as he makes his way down the Garden Route to Cape Town on a Harley-Davidson motorbike.
June, 2010 - South African Airways operated an Airbus A340-200 to Port Elizabeth to help manage the extra volume of people during the FIFA World Cup 2010.
Read more about this topic: Port Elizabeth Airport
Famous quotes containing the word special:
“We’ve got to figure these things a little bit different than most people. Y’know, there’s something about going out in a plane that beats any other way.... A guy that washes out at the controls of his own ship, well, he goes down doing the thing that he loved the best. It seems to me that that’s a very special way to die.”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)