{"id":103078,"date":"2025-10-25T08:43:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T08:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/103078\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T08:43:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T08:43:18","slug":"the-indo-daily-40-years-on-the-birth-of-knock-airport-and-the-priest-who-made-it-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/103078\/","title":{"rendered":"The Indo Daily: 40 years on- The birth of Knock Airport and the priest who made it possible"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/b05f16f2-225b-4f22-8d21-f45452cdeb99.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">It is 40 years since one parish priest in the west of Ireland saw his dreams come true. It wasn\u2019t a visit of the Pope, which had already happened years before, but the construction of an airport &#8211; Knock Airport.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Inspired by what a transport hub of its size could do for his beloved Mayo and the whole of the west of Ireland, Monsignor James Horan led a one-man charge to connect Connacht to the world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Since the 1930s, locals had been discussing the prospect of an air strip to boost visitor numbers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">So, what obstacles did Monsignor Horan face along the way? How did this Mayo man make his dream a reality and connect the west of Ireland to the wider world?<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">We look at what happened to the man who made it all happen 40 years on from that first flight landing in Knock from Dublin &#8211; and how his incredible story become the subject of a book and even a musical.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Today on The Indo Daily, Kevin Doyle is joined by Terry Reilly, author of the book \u2018On a Wing and a Prayer&#8217;, to recount the decades since the birth of Knock Airport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is 40 years since one parish priest in the west of Ireland saw his dreams come true.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,898],"class_list":{"0":"post-103078","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-latest-news-ticker"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}