Saint-Exupéry in Alghero: The French author landed in Alghero-Fertilia in 1944

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of all-time bestseller The little prince, landed 1944 on Alghero Fertilia airport as part of the French troops in World war II., just two months before he died in an accident.
Saint Exupéry, along with his navigator, André Prévot, crashed in the Libyan Sahara desert en route to Saigon in 1935. The team was attempting to fly from Paris to Saigon faster than any previous aviators, for a prize of 150,000 francs. Both survived the landing, but were faced with the prospect of rapid dehydration in the Sahara. Saint Exupéry's famous fable The Little Prince, which begins with a pilot being marooned in the desert, is in part a reference to this experience.

In 1944, however, the French author spent some time at Fertilia airport before being transferred to the French Island of Corsica. Saint Exupéry's final assignment was to collect intelligence on German troop movements in and around the Rhone Valley preceding the Allied invasion of southern France. On the evening of July 31, 1944, he left from an airbase on Corsica, and was never seen again. A woman reported having watched a plane crash around noon of August the first near the Bay of Carqueiranne off Toulon. An unidentifiable body wearing French colors was found several days later and buried in Carqueiranne that September.

The Exma museum in Cagliari dedicates an exposition to Saint Exupéry's stay in Sardinia until January, 31st 2009

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Brief history of Alghero airport: From a military airport to a centre for low cost connections from Sardinia to the rest of Europe.

Alghero Airport was founded as a military airport during the second world war.In the 1960’s the first air terminal was build in an old hangar. Only in 1968, a proper air terminal was built up; in the 1970's the runway was enlarged from 2,200 metres to today’s length of 3,000 metres.
The airport for years also as a pilot training centre not only by Italian military but also Alitalia. In the 1980’s Alghero Airport became complete airport for civil use. Nowadays, numerous charter planes as well as international low cost carrier connections link Alghero to all mayor European centres
For more information on Alghero airport history see the official website.