*** NOTE: The cache can be logged as a find as
a normal cache, but please only leave Travelbugs in the cache. No
trade items please. ***
Unusually for an airport, Knock is immortalised in
song and story. It's story is a slightly long (please excuse the
detail) and often hilarious one. Knock Airport consists of a mile
and a half of prime Jumbo-proof tarmac cut into a bog on the top of
a hill in County Mayo, together with a simple terminal building, a
control tower, a fire engine and a car park. It will soon be 20
years old. To appreciate the irony of the celebrations which will
no doubt take place next year we have to cast our minds back to
1979 and Pope John Paul II's famous visit to Ireland.
Now a lot of things are attributed to John Paul II in Ireland.
Revisionist historians claim that his speech to the "men and
women of violence" in Drogheda kick-started the Peace Process,
some people argue that the visit laid the foundations for increased
self-belief and thus laid the basis for what would become the
"Celtic Tiger". One thing that is certain is that every second lad
I went to school with was called John or John Paul, and that he
certainly contributed to the building of Knock Airport.
John Paul being a Marian fanatic, it was inevitable that he would
visit the shrine at Knock, erected to commemorate an apparition of
the Virgin Mary in 1879. Accordingly Knock, described as a
'one-horse town without the horse' had its 15 minutes of
fame, after which the global-media caravan moved on and everyone
went back to sleep.
Everyone, that is, except for the parish priest, James Horan, a
formidable gent who had for years nursed an almighty grievance,
namely that his was the only major Marian shrine in Europe without
an airport. Lourdes and Fatima had their airports that pilgrims
could jet into in comfort.
James Horan was a remarkable individual, 'a doer
in a land of nay-sayers' as one of his obituaries described
him. Shortly after the Pope returned back to Rome, a meeting was
held in Knock, chaired by Monsignor Horan, who proposed the idea of
building a new airport instead of the planned extension of
Castlebar airport which would be limited because of its location
between the railway line and the Castlebar-Claremorris road.
Recognising the Pope's visit as the best chance he was ever
likely to get, Horan set about organising the construction of an
international airport, complete with a runway long enough to take
the biggest jets. He saw it as a development essential to the
future of the west of Ireland. He argued that smaller airports were
for wealthy people, whereas regional and international airports
enabled large passenger jets to carry ordinary people at lower
rates, more frequently and over longer distances. From the outset,
some commentators poured scorn on the idea of an international
airport being built on a "foggy, boggy site" in Mayo and
predicted that the local fauna would be enriched by the addition of
a white elephant!
But not to be deterred, a committee was formed, a feasibility
study carried out and a site between Charlestown and Kilkelly
selected. The first sod was turned on May 2nd 1981. Originally it
was planned to build a runway of 6,000 feet but the airport was
completed with a runway of 8,100 feet, capable of handling 747s.
Horan’s first step was to invite the Taoiseach (Prime
Minister) to lunch. Charlie Haughey is a Mayo man and was at
the time a Prime Minister in deep political trouble. Horan emerged
with a promise of IR£8 million for his airport. It was, people
said, the most expensive meal Charlie Haughey ever ate. The airport
project was viewed with incredulity, derision and outrage by the
east-coast establishment. Horan, however, turned this derision back
on itself, firstly by mocking it and then by using it to cement
local support for his dream. News footage of the time show
reporters who arrived to this plateau in Mayo to encounter a man in
a priest’s collar directing JCBs and Dumper Trucks around. When
asked what was happening, he replied, looking at the reporter with
scorn and replied “Sure, we’re building an airport. What else
would we be doing?”
In due course Haughey fell from power, a Fine
Gael/Labour coalition government led by Garret Fitzgerald came into
office and the airport ran out of money with the runway two-thirds
completed. The new administration loftily refused to throw good
money after bad. The weed-strewn ruins of the project, they
reasoned, would stand forever as a cautionary monument to Charlie's
ruthless profligacy and the grandeur of peasants who had the
temerity to aspire to tarmac rather than the grass strip more
appropriate to their provincial status.
Around the same time, Christy Moore, a well-known
Irish folk singer, used to travel to concerts in Mayo and in his
own words, would stop off at Knock and smoke a joint or two, before
tearing down the idle runway at 100 miles an hour in his battered
old van.
He wrote a very funny song about Knock Airport, you can read the
lyrics here
In the meantime, James Horan was not to be
deterred. He turned round and put the screws on the local Catholic
community, as well as the Irish Diaspora in the United States and
the European Community and eventually came up with enough cash to
finish the runway and build what was not so much a terminal
building as a terminal shed.
It was rumoured that the US government (even the CIA or NATO)
helped fund it because, during Cold War, another airstrip close to
the western edge of Europe that could accomodate the US's largest
transport planes and bombers would have been useful. It would
certainly be easy to defend - the roads to the airport were so bad
20 years ago that there was no chance of anyone sneaking up on it.
Also, the plateau is in cloud over 200 days a year, making
satellite surveillance difficult. Wherever the money came from, it
poured in and Knock Airport was ready to go.
Once the airport was complete, the establishment had one final
shot in its locker. This 'airport' was all very well, they
said, but who will fly into it? Certainly not Aer Lingus, the state
carrier, which viewed Knock with the same fastidious disdain as the
government. At this point, Horan and his supporters were genuinely
stumped.
They were saved by Ryanair, a then new independent carrier which
had been set up the previous year, and which was eager to find some
way - any way - of scoring off Aer Lingus, with whom they were
engaged in a price war on the Dublin - London route. Ryanair
started regular scheduled services from the UK to Knock and it -
and the airport - has never looked back. Although it never really
triggered an increase in local industry, it has aided tourism in
the area immensely and since many people emigrated from the West of
Ireland, it is exceptionally busy at Christmas time.
The inaugural flight bringing pilgrims from Knock to Rome took
place in November 1985 and the official opening some months later
on 30 May 1986. Tragically, Monsignor Horan did not live to see the
impact of the airport on the region. He died in Lourdes in August
1986, a few months after the official opening of the airport. His
remains were the first to be flown home to the new international
airport. James Horan died 20 years ago, but at least lived long
enough to see his dream realised. What he - and Charlie Haughey -
understood is an economic truth which has been all but buried under
the weight of Thatcherist and Reaganite dogma, namely that there
are times when state investment is the essential prerequisite for
development. Sadly this concept is still not clearly understood by
the Dublin Government.
The advent of an airport with regular jet flights
to the UK and elsewhere has transformed the economic and social
prospects of Knock's hinterland. It used to take a day's hard
travelling to get from Britain to the west of Ireland.
Now you get into a plane in Stansted and an hour later walk out
into a breeze which comes straight off the Atlantic and has nothing
more sinister on it than peat smoke. Now there's a real miracle for
you.
Enjoy your visit! – because it’s a funny old place...
