History
The first transcontinental flight, a biplane flown by Calbraith Perry Rodgers, landed in 1911 on Long Beach's sandy beach. From 1911 until the airport was created, planes continued to use the beach as a runway.
The famous barnstormer Earl S. Daugherty had leased the area that later became the airport for air shows, stunt flying, wing walking and passenger rides. Later, he started the world's first flight school in 1919 at the same location. In 1923 Daugherty convinced the City council to use the site to create the first municipal airport.
During the 1940s and 1950s the only airline nonstops were to Los Angeles, San Diego, and sometimes Catalina Island; in 1962 Western Airlines started one Lockheed Electra flight a day to San Francisco. Jets arrived in 1968; in 1969 Western had nonstop 737s to Las Vegas, Oakland and San Francisco, but by 1980 SFO was the only nonstop jet destination (on PSA by then).
In 1981 the startup airline Jet America started nonstop MD80 flights to Chicago and, in 1982, to Dallas-Fort Worth. In 1982 Alaska Airlines started nonstops to Portland and Seattle; in 1983 American started ORD and DFW and United started Denver. In 1984 United had two daily 767s to Denver, which surely were the largest passenger aircraft ever scheduled into Long Beach.
Between 1990 and 1992 Continental, Delta, TWA and USAir discontinued service to the airport; in early 2006 American Airlines also pulled out.
- Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan used to regularly fly out of Daugherty Field. Before his infamous flight from Brooklyn, New York to Ireland in 1938, he had already flown a transcontinental flight from Long Beach to New York. He was supposed to be returning to Daugherty Field after authorities had refused his request to fly on to Ireland, but because of a claimed navigational error, he ended up in Ireland instead. He never publicly acknowledged having flown to Ireland intentionally.
- The final scenes of the 1947 film The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, starring Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, and Shirley Temple, are set at Daugherty Field.
- The facade of Long Beach Airport's passenger terminal served as the fictional "Aeropuerto Val Verde" (Val Verde Airport) in the 1985 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Commando (1985).
- The airport is used instead of the Napa Valley Airport in Disney's 1998 remake of "The Parent Trap".
- The opening scenes of Nickelodeon's "Clockstoppers" (2002) is filmed at Long Beach Airport.
Read more about this topic: Long Beach Airport
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