July 28, 2006
In the Republic of Ecuador, the inaugural flight at a terminal for an international airport took place. This airport is located three miles (five kilometers) north of the central part of Guayaquil, which is second only to the Ecuadorian capital of Quito as the country’s largest city. (Guayaquil also has the distinction of being the capital of Guayas, Ecuador’s most populous province.)
The airport serving Guayaquil was originally named in honor of Simón Bolívar (1783-1830), the Caracas-born military and political leader who played a pivotal role in liberating much of Latin America (including present-day Ecuador) from Spanish rule. As a key part of preparations for dedicating the newly built 540,000-square-foot (50,167-square-meter) terminal for both domestic and international flights, however, the airport was formally renamed after José Joaquín de Olmedo (1780-1847). Along with achieving renown as a poet, Olmedo served as mayor of Guayaquil and president of Ecuador.
The two-story, state-of-the-art terminal at José Joaquín de Olmedo International Airport is the largest facility of its kind in Ecuador. This terminal was officially opened the day before the first flight there. It was not until the following month, though, that the majority of airlines serving the airport began operating flights to and from that terminal on a regular basis.
José Joaquín de Olmedo International Airport is one of Ecuador’s busiest airports. This airport was named “Best Airport in Latin America 2008 & 2009” by the magazine Bloomberg BusinessWeek (now formally spelled as Bloomberg Businessweek). Another claim to fame for José Joaquín de Olmedo International Airport is that it has become a major “way station” for refueling planes and picking up passengers for flights from the Ecuadorian mainland to the Galápagos Islands (a popular Eastern Pacific tourist destination that collectively forms Ecuador’s province of Galápagos).
Photo Credit: Alfredo Molina (licensed at Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licensed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)
Additional information on airports in Ecuador is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_Ecuador
Transportation History 
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