Stewart International Airport (IATA: SWF, ICAO: KSWF) is a public use, joint civil-military, airport located in the southern Hudson Valley, west of Newburgh, New York and over 60 miles (97 km) north of Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The airport is located in the Town of Newburgh and the Town of New Windsor.
Originally developed in the 1930s as a military base to allow cadets at the nearby United States Military Academy at West Point to learn aviation, it has over the years grown into the major passenger airport for the mid-Hudson region and continues to serve as a military airfield as well, currently housing the 105th Airlift Wing of the New York Air National Guard and Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 452 (VMGR-452) of the United States Marine Corps Reserve. The space shuttle could have landed at Stewart in an emergency.
It has made history in several ways. After its closure as an active Air Force base in the early 1970s, an ambitious plan by former Governor Nelson Rockefeller to greatly expand and develop the airport led to a bitter and protracted struggle with local landowners that led to reforms in the state's eminent domain laws but no actual development of the land acquired.
In 1981, the 52 American hostages held in Iran made their return to American soil at Stewart. In 2000, the airport became the first U.S. commercial airport privatized when United Kingdom-based National Express Group was awarded a 99-year lease on the airport. After postponing its plans to change the facility's name after considerable local opposition, it announced plans to sell its rights to the airport.
On January 25, 2007, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey board voted to acquire the remaining 93 years of the lease, effectively ending the privatization experiment. It took control of the airport on November 1 of that year. In 2008, AFCO AvPorts was awarded the contract to operate the facility.
Read more about Stewart International Airport: Airlines and Destinations, Status and Expansion, Facilities, Access, Accidents and Incidents
Famous quotes containing the words stewart and/or airport:
“Word’s gane to the kitchen,
And word’s gane to the ha’,
That Marie Hamilton gangs wi’ bairn
To the hichest Stewart of a’.”
—Unknown. Mary Hamilton (l. 1–4)
“Airplanes are invariably scheduled to depart at such times as 7:54, 9:21 or 11:37. This extreme specificity has the effect on the novice of instilling in him the twin beliefs that he will be arriving at 10:08, 1:43 or 4:22, and that he should get to the airport on time. These beliefs are not only erroneous but actually unhealthy.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)