April 11, 1954
In southwestern France, a newly constructed airport was opened in the region known as the French Basque Country. This airport is specifically located just 3.1 miles (five kilometers) southeast of the city of Biarritz, a popular seaside tourist destination.
Guy Petit (1905-1988), who served as mayor of Biarritz from 1945 to 1977, officiated at the inaugural ceremony for the airport. He had been a staunch advocate for building Biarritz Pays Basque Airport in the first place. (“Pays” is the term for areas in France in which local residents sharing a wide range of mutual interests – economic, cultural, and social – are legally entitled to collaborate on communal planning contracts.)
One of the more high-profile uses of Biarrtiz Pays Basque Airport, which is also simply called Biarritz Airport, took place in August 2019. This is when several international delegations traveled to the airport to attend that year’s Group of Seven (G7) summit being held in Biarritz. An intergovernmental group of major industrialized democracies, G7 consists of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
(The above photo of the interior of Biarritz Pays Basque Airport’s terminal was taken in 2006.)
Photo Credit: Harrieta171 (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)
For more information on Biarritz Pays Basque Airport, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biarritz_Pays_Basque_Airport
Transportation History 
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