Jamaica airport named after 007 author

Jamaica has opened a new international airport named after Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels, who wrote his tales of espionage and intrigue while living on the Caribbean island.

The Ian Fleming International Airport was officially opened this week by Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding.

Located on Jamaica's north coast near the resort of Ocho Rios, the Caribbean island's third international airport aims to serve high-end tourists, the government's Jamaica Information Service said.

Fleming wrote his best-selling Bond novels -- such as From Russia With Love and Dr. No - in Jamaica, using the island's exotic setting in many of his plots and called it the oldest and most romantic of former British possessions.

Ian Fleming made a contribution to Jamaica and gave Jamaica an image much larger than it would otherwise have had, because this was where the adrenalin flowed; where the creativity emerged that enabled him to write 13 James Bond novels, Golding said in comments cited by JIS.

Golding thanked the Fleming family for allowing the Jamaican government to use the name.

The airport, developed on the site of an old airfield, is not far from the Goldeneye estate in Saint Mary Parish where Fleming lived and wrote in the 1950s and 1960s. He died in 1964 in England.

Several of the movies from his books also include scenes filmed in Jamaica.