December 7, 2017
Blaise Diagne International Airport, which is located in the western part of the Republic of Senegal, was formally opened for scheduled flights. This facility replaced Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport in that region as the main airport for Dakar, the capital and largest city of Senegal. Blaise Diagne International Airport is 27 miles (43 kilometers) east of downtown Dakar.
This airport is extensively used for flights to and from Europe; the Middle East; the United States; Macaronesia (encompassing the North Atlantic archipelagos known as the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, Madeira, and the Azores); and several other countries in Africa.
Blaise Diagne International Airport was named after a Senegalese statesman who lived during a time in which the present-day republic was under French colonial rule. Blaise Diagne (1872-1934), a staunch champion of equal rights for everyone, was a longtime mayor of Dakar. He was also the first person of West African descent to be elected to the French Chamber of Deputies, one of the two legislative assemblies of the French Parliament during the French Third Republic years between 1875 and 1940.
Photo Credit: Jjm2311 (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en)
For more information on Blaise Diagne International Airport, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Diagne_International_Airport
Transportation History 
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