Greenville Downtown Airport

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Greenville Downtown Airport is three miles east of Greenville, in Greenville County, South Carolina. It is owned by the Greenville Airport Commission. And is the busiest general aviation airport in South CarolinaThe National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2011–2015 categorized it as a general aviation facility.HistoryGMU opened in 1928 as Greenville Municipal Airport. In 1930 it received its first airmail flight. Amelia Earhart flew demonstration flights at GMU in an Autogiro for the Beech-Nut Company in November 1931. Eastern Airlines began scheduled flights in the late 1930s and Delta Airlines arrived in 1945.During World War II the United States Army Air Forces used the airfield for training. The airport was used jointly by the Army Air Forces Flying Training Command, Southeast Training Center (later Eastern Flying Training Command) as a contract glider training school, operated by Southern Airways, Inc. The 19th AAF Glider Training Detachment was a Basic training school active from September 1942 until March 1943 using Aeronca TG-5 and Laister-Kauffmann TG-4A training gliders. The airport was then reassigned to Air Technical Service Command and used as a supply and maintenance depot until being returned to full civil control in October 1945.Until 1962 GMU (then GRL) was the commercial airport for the Greenville area; in April 1957 it had 13 weekday departures on Eastern, four on Delta and four on Southern. Eastern had one nonstop to Richmond, but no other nonstops out of Greenville exceeded 200 miles.