The once much ridiculed airport in the west of Ireland, Knock, overcame impossible odds to become one of the country’s most unusual aviation success stories. Declan Hasson reflects on the remote Irish gateway’s extraordinary history and development.
Ireland West Airport (formerly Knock International Airport) is in County Mayo, ten miles from the village of Knock and “approximately half-way” between Sligo (34 miles to the north) and Galway (55 miles south). The surrounding landscape is one of small towns and villages – a feature of this part of Ireland’s western seaboard.
The airport’s catchment area of 4,000sq miles (10,359km2) includes most of the six neighbouring counties’ population of around 750,000 residents. Perched 665ft (202m) above sea level, on what the cynics describe as “a foggy, boggy hill,” the site has become Ireland’s fourth busiest, with passenger throughput exceeding 807,000 last year.
Testing Times
But the journey has not been easy for this iconic gateway in a part of the world blighted for decades by mass emigration and social and economic deprivation. In the late 1970s, the unemployment rate in the surrounding area was 49%, but an event at the end of that decade was to change the f…
