Ajaccio Napoleon Bonaparte Airport
[2] The airport is the main base of regional airline Air Corsica, which operates services to continental France.The toponym's origin, meaning "Field of Gold", remains obscure; some 19th century authors refer to a "rich cropland"; others, to a malaria-infested marshland.[citation needed] In 1944 the United States Army Air Forces took over the airport and put down a hard surface of perforated metallic mats from which a squadron of P-51s flew.On 16 April 1981, President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing was the target of an attempted assassination at the airport grounds by the National Liberation Front of Corsica.Before the crash of Inex-Adria Aviopromet Flight 1308, the airport had no radar, and its holding pattern had aircraft fly over mountains.