The British island of St. Helena - in the middle of the south Atlantic - welcomed its first 78 commercial airline passengers on Saturday.
The long-awaited inaugural plane from Johannesburg touched down on one of humanity's most isolated outposts in the middle of the south Atlantic, approximately 45 minutes behind schedule.
St Helena Airport, built with £285 million of funding from the Department for International Development (Dfid), was due to open last year but the launch of commercial flights was delayed because of dangerous wind conditions.
Further trials were carried out in August and the airport was given the go-ahead to begin operations by South African aviation authorities.
The 4,500 people living on St. Helena, a British colony since 1658 - most famous as the windswept outpost where French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte breathed his last - might also be forgiven for thinking the day would never come.
There has been talk of building an airport on St. Helena since the 1930s. The best site – one of the few flat spaces on the notoriously craggy island – was ruled out because of a nearby breeding ground for the wirebird, an endangered species of plover.
An airport at the new site, on top of a valley filled in with 8 million cubic meters of rock, suffered numerous setbacks and delays as costs ballooned to £285million, to the horror of the British government.
Before the opening of the airport, which will receive weekly flights to and from the South African commercial capital, the only way to St. Helena was a five-night voyage from Cape Town aboard the RMS St. Helena, a British postal ship.
Governor Lisa Phillips dismissed the critics and said that even before it accepted its first commercial flight, the airport had proved its worth in the last 18 months by enabling several life-saving emergency medical evacuations, including a newborn child.
"I’ve seen the headlines about the world's most useless airport, but for St. Helenans this has already been the most useful airport," she told reporters after greeting them on the tarmac. "It's priceless."