Post by Bernard on Sept 18, 2024 14:45:19 GMT
On 19 October 1960, Malé Airport saw its bold beginning by the first aircraft, which landed on the slotted steel runway on the Hulhule Island. The airplane was a Vickers Viking of the Royal New Zealand Air Force. It eventuelly started then from China Bay air base at Trincomalee or RAF Gan in the most southern part of the Maldives.
The first commercial flight was done by a DC-3 Air Ceylon, which landed there on 10 April 1962. In 1964 the Maldives government decided to replace the slotted steel runway with an improved asphalt one. This step was the beginning of scheduled flights, probably with Avro 748 as mentioned somewhere.
After having left Colombo Katunayake and heading southwestern,
the Air Ceylon aircraft reached North Malé Atoll,
passed Malé Island with its "town" (beginning the Sixties there really where just a few buildings and an intense vegetation)
and landed on the rudimentary runway which later became officialy Hulhule Airport. I couldn't reproduce the crowd that followed the landing that day.
Curiously Colombo Airport was first named "Katunayake", in honour of former und well known Prime Minister it changed to "Bandaranaike" in 1970, then was renamed again "Katunayake" in 1977 and finally back to "Bandaranaike" in 1995!
In the meantime I came across a post about the same destination on another site. This prompted me to include exceptionally this arichpel in a modern version of FS9 and recreate this place as I discovered it twenty years ago. The older LAGO scenery is well suited to this purpose.
The seaplane terminal at Male, the airport itself and the city of Male in the background
Back then, the seaplane was moored to a raft few hundred feets from the Fonimagoodhoo Island or better known as Reethi Beach. Quite unsual and ugly to be debarked almost in the middle of the Indian Ocean!
Here, the DHC-6 Twin Otter of Maldivian Air Transport makes an AI round trip flight from Male. The stearable model had to be adapted thanks to the help of Günther Kirschstein (aka GKCherry), which is a wellknown FDE specialist and contributed to many model creations.
Bernard