McGhee Tyson Airport is a public/military airport 12 miles south of

Knoxville Knoxville is a city in and the county seat of Knox County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, Knoxville's population was 190,740, making it the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Division and the state' ...

,. Federal Aviation Administration. effective November 15, 2012. in

Alcoa Alcoa Corporation (an acronym for Aluminum Company of America) is a Pittsburgh-based industrial corporation. It is the world's eighth-largest producer of aluminum. Alcoa conducts operations in 10 countries. Alcoa is a major producer of primar ...

Blount County, Tennessee Blount County is a county located in the East Tennessee Grand Division of the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, its population was 135,280. The county seat is Maryville, which is also the county's largest city. Blount County ...

, United States. It is named for

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

pilot Charles McGhee Tyson, who was killed in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

. Owned by the Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority, it is served by several major airlines and employs about 2,700 people. It is a 30-minute drive to the

Great Smoky Mountains National Park Great Smoky Mountains National Park is an American national park in the southeastern United States, with parts in North Carolina and Tennessee. The park straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, w ...

. The airport is the home of McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base, an

air base An air base (sometimes referred to as a military air base, military airfield, military airport, air station, naval air station, air force station, or air force base) is an aerodrome used as a military base by a military force for the operation ...

for the

134th Air Refueling Wing The 134th Air Refueling Wing (134 ARW) is a unit of the Tennessee Air National Guard, stationed at McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base, Knoxville, Tennessee. If activated for federal service, the Wing is gained by the United States Air Force Air ...

(134 ARW) of the

Tennessee Air National Guard The Tennessee Air National Guard (TN ANG) is the aerial militia of the State of Tennessee, United States of America. It is, along with the Tennessee Army National Guard, an element of the Tennessee National Guard. As state militia units, the units ...

History

On August 1, 1930, the original McGhee Tyson airport opened, named for Charles McGhee Tyson. It as built on 60 acres in West Knoxville where West High School is now located. In 1935, the city purchased 351 acres in Blount County for the current airport. On July 29, 1937, an

American Airlines American Airlines is a major US-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, within the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It is the largest airline in the world when measured by fleet size, scheduled passengers carried, and revenue passeng ...

Stinson

Trimotor A trimotor is an aircraft powered by three engines and represents a compromise between complexity and safety and was often a result of the limited power of the engines available to the designer. Many trimotors were designed and built in the 1920s ...

(about 10 seats) touched down, the first airline flight; before that, American's Stinsons landed at Island Airport on Dickinson Island east of town. The 1938 directory shows a 3100-ft N-S runway and a 4200-ft NE-SW runway at McGhee Tyson; the 1939 directory shows 4000 ft N-S and 5000 ft NE-SW. The city built a control tower in 1941. The development of TYS helped the City of Alcoa diversify its economy and gain its economic independence from what is today

Alcoa Inc Alcoa Corporation (an acronym for Aluminum Company of America) is a Pittsburgh-based industrial corporation. It is the world's eighth-largest producer of aluminum. Alcoa conducts operations in 10 countries. Alcoa is a major producer of primary ...

., the world's third largest producer of aluminum. Alcoa Inc. built one of its production plants in Alcoa because of the proximity of dams along the

Little Tennessee River The Little Tennessee River is a tributary of the Tennessee River that flows through the Blue Ridge Mountains from Georgia, into North Carolina, and then into Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. It drains portions of three national ...

which were a hydroelectric energy source for the production of aluminum. In 1951, the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Si ...

built several facilities on the field and runway 5L. 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 ...

(FAA) added an

Instrument Landing System In aviation, the instrument landing system (ILS) is a precision radio navigation system that provides short-range guidance to aircraft to allow them to approach a runway at night or in bad weather. In its original form, it allows an aircraft to ...

to runways 5L and 23R in 1959. In 1961, with financing by the Tennessee Air National Guard, runway 5L was extended to . The first scheduled airline jets were Delta DC-9s in December 1965. In 1968, McGhee Tyson built a new air cargo facility; a new passenger terminal opened in 1974, a few years after runway 18/36 closed. Four years later, the Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority (MKAA) was established. In 1990, runway 5R/23L was rebuilt to 9,000 feet. In 1992, the airport authority built a new 21-acre cargo facility on the north side of the airport for

Federal Express FedEx Corporation, formerly Federal Express Corporation and later FDX Corporation, is an American multinational conglomerate holding company focused on transportation, e-commerce and business services based in Memphis, Tennessee. The name ...

, UPS and

Airborne Express Airborne Express was an express delivery company and cargo airline. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, its hub was in Wilmington, Ohio. Airborne was founded as the Airborne Flower Traffic Association of California in 1946 to fly flowers f ...

. Buildings were designed to meet the carriers' needs; 90% of the air cargo operations are UPS and Federal Express. Cost of the project was estimated at $9.3 million. In 2000, improvements to the passenger terminal were finished at a cost of $70 million, including two new concourses, 12 new gates, ticket counters, and a Ruby Tuesday restaurant. In 2002 an aircraft maintenance facility was built for

Northwest Airlines Northwest Airlines Corp. (NWA) was a major American airline founded in 1926 and absorbed into Delta Air Lines, Inc. by a merger. The merger, approved on October 29, 2008, made Delta the largest airline in the world until the American Airlines ...

, serving as their primary CRJ MRO facility. The now-defunct ExpressJet Airlines built a heavy-maintenance hangar near the air cargo facilities for its fleet. In June 2009, a new food court was completed, featuring

Starbucks Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational chain of coffeehouses and roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It is the world's largest coffeehouse chain. As of November 2021, the company had 33,833 stores in 80 cou ...

Quiznos Quiz Holdings, LLC, doing business as Quiznos, is an American franchised fast-food restaurant based in Denver, Colorado, that specializes in offering toasted submarine sandwiches. It was founded in 1981 by Jimmy Lambatos and sold to Rick and R ...

Cinnabon Cinnabon is an American chain of baked goods stores and kiosks, normally found in areas with high pedestrian traffic such as malls, airports and rest stops. The company's signature item is a cinnamon roll. As of December 2017, there are more t ...

, and Zia locations. The Zia location was replaced in April 2013 with an Uno Express Pizza. In November 2016, the agency that operates McGhee Tyson received a $27.9 million grant from the Federal Aviation Administration to complete the next phase of a multi-year runway expansion, the most expensive project the airport ever has undertaken. The north runway, 5L/23R, is being lengthened to 10,000 feet. During the work, 3,000 feet of that runway were demolished while 6,000 feet remained open for small planes. Airliners still land on Runway 5R/23L, which will remain 9,000 feet long. On December 17, 2021 the rebuilt 10,000 foot runway 5L/23R reopened.

Facilities

McGhee Tyson Airport covers 2,250

acre The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial and US customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one chain by one furlong (66 by 660 feet), which is exactly equal to 10 square chains, of a square mile, 4,840 square ...

s (911 ha) at an elevation of 979 feet (298 m). It has two parallel runways: 5L/23R is 10,000 by 150 feet (3,048 x 46 m) concrete and 5R/23L is 9,000 by 150 feet (2,743 x 46 m) asphalt. The

fixed-base operator A fixed-base operator (FBO) is an organization granted the right by an airport to operate at the airport and provide aeronautical services such as fueling, hangaring, tie-down and parking, aircraft rental, aircraft maintenance, flight instructio ...

(FBO) at TYS is the Truman-Arnold Company (TAC Air). TAC Air first moved into TYS on April 1, 2005, when it purchased Knox-Air, which had operated in TYS since 1974. Then a month later, on May 5, 2005, TAC Air purchased the only remaining FBO, Cherokee Aviation, which had been in operation since 1954. TAC Air combined these two FBOs under their own name, and they have continued to be the sole supplier of aviation fuel for commercial, corporate and general aviation aircraft as well as leased hangar space at the airport ever since. In 2017, the airport had 106,584 aircraft operations, averaging 292 per day: 43,598

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 ...

, 21,450

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) ...

, 20,271 military, and 21,265 airline. In 2017, 168 aircraft were based at the airport: 62 single-engine, 32 multi-engine, 35 military, 38 jet and 1

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attribu ...

. TYS is home to a maintenance base for Endeavor Air, crew base for Allegiant Airlines, and delivery, maintenance and training centers for

Cirrus Aircraft The Cirrus Design Corporation, doing business as Cirrus Aircraft (formally Cirrus Design), is an aircraft manufacturer that was founded in 1984 by Alan and Dale Klapmeier to produce the VK-30 kit aircraft. The company is owned by a subsidia ...

Terminal

McGhee Tyson Airport has two levels. The top level is accessed via the curbside drop off and the parking garage. The top level has ticket counters, security, gates, restaurants and shops. It is designed with a Smoky Mountain theme, complete with faux waterfalls and wood carvings of

bear Bears are carnivoran mammals of the family Ursidae. They are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans. Although only eight species of bears are extant, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the No ...

s. The bottom level is used for car rental counters, three baggage claims, airline offices, and airport offices. There are 12 gates. On a regular day Gates 2 & 4 are used by Allegiant Air, Gate 6 is used by Frontier, Gates 8, 10, & 12 are used by American, Gates 1, 3 & 5 are used by Delta, and Gates 7, 9, & 11 are used by United. Gate assignments can be subject to change.

Airlines and destinations

Passenger

Cargo

Statistics

Top destinations

Airline market share

Accidents and incidents

* On March 12, 1992, a

USAir Express US Airways Express was the brand name for the regional affiliate of US Airways, under which a number of individually owned commuter air carriers and regional airlines operate short and medium haul routes. This code sharing service was previously ...

Jetstream 31 The British Aerospace Jetstream is a small twin-turboprop airliner, with a pressurised fuselage, developed as the ''Jetstream 31'' from the earlier Handley Page Jetstream. A larger version of the Jetstream was also manufactured, the British ...

crashed on landing after the pilot failed to lower the landing gear. There were no passengers aboard, but the two crew members were killed.

References

External links

*
134th Air Refueling Wing
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Mcghee Tyson Airport Airports in Tennessee Buildings and structures in Blount County, Tennessee Transportation in Knoxville, Tennessee Transportation in Blount County, Tennessee Alcoa, Tennessee Airports established in 1930 1930 establishments in Tennessee