Saturday, January 7, 2012

Cleveland Youngstown - a municipal airport that grew

A 1940s scene
A 1950s scene with the central building framed by a couple of DC-3's.
The airport was founded in 1925, the first municipally owned airport in the USA, and it has been the site of many other airport firsts: the first air traffic control tower, ground to air radio control and the first airfield lighting system, all in 1930, and the first U.S. airport to be directly connected to a local or regional rail transit system, in 1968. The airport was named after its founder, former city manager William R. Hopkins, on his 82nd birthday in 1951.

In 2010 the airport handled 9,492,455 passengers although this was a 2.3% decrease compared to 2009. There were 192,863 operations (takeoffs and landings) in 2010. The airport handles more than 325 daily nonstop flights to over 85 destinations. These include flights to/from Canada and Mexico, so the airport's title is the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.
A satellite view of the present-day airport. (NASA)

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