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:
“When we walk the streets at night in safety, it does not strike us that this might be otherwise. This habit of feeling safe has become second nature, and we do not reflect on just how this is due solely to the working of special institutions. Commonplace thinking often has the impression that force holds the state together, but in fact its only bond is the fundamental sense of order which everybody possesses.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)