Airport Experience® News - Conference Issue 2024

BEFORE YOU TAKE OFF

AXC Isn’t The Only One Celebrating An Anniversary This Year

BY SARAH BELING

W e all have our history, some longer than others. While the Airport Experience Conference is celebrating its 20 th anniversary, there are some in the industry who are commemorating even bigger milestones. AXC has served the industry for 20 years, but Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) turns 50 this year. The airport is commemorating a half-century of operations with a full year of fun including limited-edition merchandise giveaways, selfie stations, passenger discounts and anniversary-themed employee uniforms, with more surprises planned along the way. Opened on January 13th, 1974, the four-terminal DFW was, at the time of its completion, the world’s largest airport by land area (it now sits at third). Over the course of its tenure, the facility has seen several notable aviation milestones, including becoming the first U.S. airport to host the landing of the high-speed Concorde in 1973 (just prior to its opening), establishing itself as American Airlines’ first hub in 1981, becoming the first commercial facility to host a space shuttle landing in 1989 and earning the U.N. Global Climate Action Award in 2020. In a few months, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the airport’s opening day on July 9th, 1949. Kathy Mills Rozzini, whose grandfather founded the Seattle-based carrier that would become Alaska Airlines and who attended the airport’s opening ceremony as a three-year-old, remembers it as “a very hot day,” where staff members handed out “bottles of Coke, a really big treat in those days.” Built on land that also housed rabbit, frog and mushroom farms, SEA would later go on to be the first airport to employ a staff biologist tasked with developing an eco-friendly approach to protecting planes and wildlife. The boomerang-shaped

building was initially set up to serve just 900 passengers an hour. More than 74 years later, the airport saw its busiest day yet, with a record-breaking 198,000 estimated travelers passing through its doors on July 24, 2023. To commemorate the facility’s massive growth, the airport will release a historical docuseries as well as a special edition of its book Rising Tides and Tailwinds: The Story of the Port of Seattle as well as plan celebratory scavenger hunts and customer appreciation events in July. Long Beach Airport (LGB) has an even longer history. The Southern California airport just marked its 100th year, having first broken ground on November 26, 1923. Known as California’s oldest municipal airport, the facility quickly became a thriving landmark during the 1920s and 1930s Golden Age of Flight. The airport was a key manufacturing center during World War II, employing thousands of women — notably, many from diverse backgrounds — to produce aircraft elements, and would later go on to commemorate their service at Long Beach’s Rosie the Riveter Park. The airport honors these stories through a centennial film series as well as a vintage poster collection, public

Above Left: The 1950s era gift shop (SEA shop pictured) offered many of the same items that can be found in today’s travel essentials stores, but long-ago staples like cigarettes and stamps have largely gone by the wayside. Above Right: Airport terminals look a bit different today than they did five decades ago, as this 1968 image from Long Beach Airport shows. art installation by Southern California-based artist Marconi Calindas-Cafege and the restoration of the airport’s historic terminal and its signature mosaic tiles. “We found them to be in remarkably good condition,” says LGB public affairs officer Kate Kuykendall of the tiles, adding that the airport has been working to rehab found pieces depicting Long Beach-centric vignettes like prop planes and marine life. “Part of the project is restoring the building to its 1941 grandeur,” she adds. “We consider our historic terminal [to be] the crown jewel of our airport campus, and all the modernizations that we’re making complement that from an architectural perspective and keep it the focal point of our airport campus.”

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AX NEWS MARCH 2024