History
The Buffalo Municipal Airport (as it was then known) opened in 1926 on former farmland, making it one of the oldest public airports in the country. The first passenger service, to Cleveland, began in 1927. A WPA-built Art Deco terminal building featuring a v-shaped terminal with a large cylindrical tower was added in 1938. The terminal's first expansion, which enlarged the terminal to 11 gates and added a restaurant, was constructed in 1955 to keep up with increasing traffic and larger planes. In 1959, after being acquired by the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority (NFTA), the name was changed to the Greater Buffalo International Airport. An extensive 1961 renovation/expansion remodeled the main terminal building and built a new control tower, as well as adding another concourse for American Airlines. Despite all this, the terminal again became outgrown. To address this problem, a second terminal (called the "West Terminal") was constructed in 1971 as a temporary solution while it was optimistically hoped that an all-new airport would be constructed in the near future. The West Terminal was built to last ten years and had nine gates.
Despite the addition of the West Terminal, the original terminal, now called the "East Terminal", received one more final expansion in 1977 that significantly enlarged the building. New ticket lobbies were constructed for American Airlines and United Airlines, the original 1938 building was turned into a baggage claim area, and jetways were added to the building for the first time. In 1982, two gates were added to the north/ east end of the West Terminal, used by Eastern Air Lines. The landside of the West Terminal was enlarged also, and the originally blue building was around that time repainted gray.
In the 1980s, an evaluation was performed on the terminals. At the conclusion of this evaluation in 1991, it was decided that it was no longer economical to keep renovating and expanding the dated terminals, and that an all-new airport would have to be constructed. Construction of the new building designed by the Greater Buffalo International Airport (GBIA) Design Group, a joint venture composed of Kohn Pederson Fox Associates, Cannon Design, and William Nicholas Bodouva began in 1995 in between the two existing buildings. While the new building was being constructed, the existing terminals remained open.
The brand new airport (now renamed The Buffalo-Niagara International Airport) opened on November 3, 1997. It had 14 gates. The old terminals were demolished immediately in order to allow any necessary expansion. The new building received an expansion in 1999, increasing the number of gates to 26. In 2006, the main runway was repaved and extended 750 feet (230 m), its first major upgrade since 1980. The secondary runway was extended 1,000 feet (300 m) as well.
In 2004 and in 2010, Buffalo/Niagara Int'l Airport hosted Air Force One. AFO was the first 747 to land in Buffalo. Also, in 2008 the San Diego Chargers football team brought in a Northwest 747, which then went on to London; the team's next game was against the New Orleans Saints at Wembley Stadium as part of the NFL International Series. In May 2009 an Airbus A300-600ST Beluga #3 stopped in Buffalo for an overnight stop with space shuttle parts.
In 2008 some of the local residents made a short-lived attempt to rename the airport to "Buffalo Tim Russert International Airport" after a popular news commentator and a Buffalo native Tim Russert who had died that year.
Southwest Airlines recently surpassed US Airways to become the largest carrier at BUF in terms of number of passengers. US Airways was bumped to second and JetBlue Airways ranked third.
A large Curtiss-Wright plant once existed on the Airport property. Built in 1942, the building was sold to Westinghouse in 1946 following the end of World War II. Westinghouse sold the facility to Buffalo developer Paul Snyder in 1985, who turned the building into the Buffalo Airport Center industrial park. The building was abandoned in 1991 and demolished in 1999 to make way for the expansion of the airport's secondary runway.
Read more about this topic: Buffalo Niagara International Airport
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“Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
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“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)