Midland International Air and Space Port (formerly Midland International Airport) is in the city limits of
Midland, Texas
Midland is a city in and the county seat of Midland County, Texas, United States. A small part of Midland is in Martin County.
At the 2020 census, Midland's population was 132,524. It is the principal city of the Midland, Texas metropolitan ...
, United States, about midway between Downtown Midland and Downtown
Odessa
Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrativ ...
, owned and operated by the City of Midland. In September 2014, it was licensed by the
Federal Aviation Administration
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...
to serve commercial spaceflight.
Overview
The airport has three airlines, two serving hubs with regional jets and one flying mainline jets.
Southwest Airlines
Southwest Airlines Co., typically referred to as Southwest, is one of the major airlines of the United States and the world's largest low-cost carrier. It is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and has scheduled service to 121 destinations in the U ...
is the largest carrier at the airport. In 2012, 497,193 passengers were enplaned.
History
Origins
The airport started as Sloan Field, a small airport started in 1927 by Samuel Addison Sloan. Sloan leased 220 acres of flat grassland from Clarence Scharbauer, a rancher. Sam Sloan died in a plane crash in 1929, and his brother, William Harvey Sloan, continued the operation. In 1939, Harvey Sloan sold the field to the City of Midland for $14,500.
As war clouds gathered over Europe in the late 1930s, Midland businessmen could foresee the possibility of a military base in West Texas and in 1940 they started promoting the airfield for use as a training base to the military establishment in Washington. The airfield was upgraded by the
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...
with runway and taxiway improvements and lighting. Brigadier General G.C. Brant, Commander of the Gulf Coast Air Corps Training Center at
Randolph Field
Randolph Air Force Base was an United States Air Force base located at Universal City, Texas ( east-northeast of Downtown San Antonio).
Opened in 1931, Randolph has been a flying training facility for the United States Army Air Corps, the Uni ...
, visited and reported that the situation at Midland was favorable. On June 13, 1941, it was announced that Midland would become a training base, Midland Army Air Field.
World War II
Midland Army Air Field was home to the Army Air Forces Bombardier School, one of a dozen
bombardier-training schools. It was one of the "West Texas Bombardier Quadrangle" schools of the Army Air Forces Training Command, along with
Childress Army Airfield,
San Angelo Army Airfield
San Angelo Army Airfield is an inactive United States Air Force base, about 8 miles south-southwest of San Angelo, Texas. It was active during World War II as a training airfield. It was closed on 30 November 1945.
History
Initially built as ...
and
Big Spring Army Airfield
Webb Air Force Base , previously named Big Spring Air Force Base, was a United States Air Force facility of the Air Training Command that operated from 1951 to 1977 in West Texas within the current city limits of Big Spring. Webb AFB was a majo ...
. The sole purpose of the Bombardier College was to train young men to use the
Norden bombsight
The Norden Mk. XV, known as the Norden M series in U.S. Army service, is a bombsight that was used by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) and the United States Navy during World War II, and the United States Air Force in the Korean and t ...
.
The first group of cadets, Class 42–6, arrived for training from Ellington, Texas, on February 6, 1942. Midland reached a peak base population of more than 4,000 and graduated a total of 6,627 bombardier officers by the conclusion of the training mission on January 1, 1946.
Postwar civil use
The City of Midland annexed much of the land housing the airport on April 26, 1946, while a piece that became a part of a runway was annexed on February 25, 1964.
Midland-Odessa Regional Airport opened its new passenger terminal in the early 1960s. It was served by
Continental Airlines
Continental Airlines, simply known as Continental, was a major United States airline founded in 1934 and eventually headquartered in Houston, Texas. It had ownership interests and brand partnerships with several carriers.
Continental started o ...
and
Trans-Texas Airways Trans-Texas may refer to:
* Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC), a transportation network in the planning and early construction stages in the U.S. state of Texas
* Trans-Texas Airways, a former a United States airline, known as Texas International
Texa ...
(and
American Airlines
American Airlines is a major airlines of the United States, major US-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, within the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It is the Largest airlines in the world, largest airline in the world when measured ...
, until 1963); the first jets were Continental
Boeing 707
The Boeing 707 is an American, long-range, narrow-body airliner, the first jetliner developed and produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes.
Developed from the Boeing 367-80 prototype first flown in 1954, the initial first flew on December 20, ...
s in 1965. The terminal had a scalloped roofline, allowing a column-free interior. All services (ticketing, baggage claim and concessions) were inside the building, and a single departure lounge opened onto the apron.
The late 1970s "oil boom" led to economic growth and more flights by incumbent airlines and new entrants like
Southwest Airlines
Southwest Airlines Co., typically referred to as Southwest, is one of the major airlines of the United States and the world's largest low-cost carrier. It is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and has scheduled service to 121 destinations in the U ...
; American Airlines returned in June 1981, and America West arrived in 1987.
A new gate area was built along the apron with four second-level gates with
jet bridge
A jet bridge (also termed jetway, jetwalk, airgate, gangway, aerobridge/airbridge, skybridge, finger, airtube, expedited suspended passenger entry system (E-SPES), or its official industry name passenger boarding bridge (PBB)) is an enclosed, ...
s, concession space and escalator wells linking the addition to the existing terminal. The south end of the main terminal was extended with more ticketing space and the original terminal was modernized (the scalloped roofline was removed).
By the 1990s, several new-entrant carriers had pulled out and most of the rest had downgraded to regional jets; only Southwest, the airport's largest carrier, operated main line jets. The terminal building looked tired, and airport officials began planning a replacement. Construction began (in the infield parking lot) in 1996. The first half of the new terminal opened in early 1999 and the 1966 terminal was demolished. The second half of the new terminal was finished in late 1999. The first airplane built and flown in Texas, the "Pliska" (an approximate copy of the Wright Flyer II) was donated to the airport and is displayed in the terminal over the baggage-claim area.
The Confederate Air Force (now the
Commemorative Air Force
The Commemorative Air Force (CAF), formerly known as the Confederate Air Force, is an American non-profit organization based in Dallas, Texas, that preserves and shows historical aircraft at airshows, primarily in the U.S. and Canada.
The CAF h ...
) moved to Midland in 1991 and holds an annual
airshow
An air show (or airshow, air fair, air tattoo) is a public event where aircraft are exhibited.
They often include aerobatics demonstrations, without they are called "static air shows" with aircraft parked on the ground.
The largest air show m ...
featuring its
warbird
A warbird is any vintage military aircraft now operated by civilian organizations and individuals, or in some instances, by historic arms of military forces, such as the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, the RAAF Museum Historic Flight, or the ...
aircraft at the airport.
In 2012, the Midland City Council amended a contract allowing three teams of experts – Midland International Airport, Parkhill, and Smith & Cooper – to prepare and submit a commercial space launch site application. On September 17, 2014, the
Federal Aviation Administration
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...
formally approved the application, making Midland International Airport the first primary commercial service airport to be certified as a spaceport. The original primary purpose of the launch site was to permit
XCOR Aerospace
XCOR Aerospace was an American private spaceflight and rocket engine development company based at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California, Midland International Air and Spaceport in Midland, Texas and the Amsterdam area, the Netherla ...
to test its reusable winged commercial space vehicle,
XCOR Lynx
The XCOR Lynx was a proposed suborbital horizontal-takeoff, horizontal-landing (HTHL),
rocket-powered spaceplane that was under development by the California-based company XCOR Aerospace to compete in the emerging suborbital spaceflight market ...
. The company relocated its headquarters to the Midland International Airport from where it had planned to offer commercial space flights. The XCOR research & development facility was planned to be located at the airport as part of a $10 million economic development incentive deal. However, as XCOR has since gone out of business, Midland Development Corp. is looking for other space companies to use the facilities.
Facilities and aircraft
![MAF airport map](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/MAF_airport_map.PNG)
Midland International Air and Space Port covers at an elevation of . It has four asphalt runways:
* 4/22:
* 10/28:
* 16L/34R:
* 16R/34L:
For the 12-month period ending July 31, 2021, the airport had 58,010 aircraft operations, average 159 per day: 29% military, 39%
general aviation
General aviation (GA) is defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as all civil aviation aircraft operations with the exception of commercial air transport or aerial work, which is defined as specialized aviation services ...
, 10%
air taxi
An air taxi is a small commercial aircraft that makes short flights on demand.
In 2001 air taxi operations were promoted in the United States by a NASA and aerospace industry study on the potential Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) an ...
and 22% airline. 106 aircraft were then based at the airport: 36 single-engine propeller, 37 multi-engine propeller, 30 jet and 3 helicopter.
Airlines and destinations
Passenger
Cargo
Statistics
Top destinations
Airline market share
Accidents and incidents
*On November 26, 1983, a Texas Western Aviation
Beechcraft King Air
The Beechcraft King Air is a line of American utility aircraft produced by Beechcraft. The King Air line comprises a number of twin-turboprop models that have been divided into two families. The Model 90 and 100 series developed in the 1960s ...
crashed on final approach to MAF after initiating a go-around. The plane pitched up in an extremely nose high attitude, entered a left bank, stalled and crashed. All eight occupants (one crew, seven passengers) were killed. The cause was undetermined.
References
External links
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*
*
{{Spaceport
1941 establishments in Texas
Buildings and structures in Midland County, Texas
Airports in Texas
Airports in Midland County, Texas
Spaceports in the United States