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:
“It is surely a matter of common observation that a man who knows no one thing intimately has no views worth hearing on things in general. The farmer philosophizes in terms of crops, soils, markets, and implements, the mechanic generalizes his experiences of wood and iron, the seaman reaches similar conclusions by his own special road; and if the scholar keeps pace with these it must be by an equally virile productivity.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)