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Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport

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{| class="infobox bordered" style="width: 220px; font-size: 95%;" |- ! colspan="4" style="text-align: center; background-color: #4682B4; color: white;" |Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport |- |align="center" colspan="4"|

|- !colspan="4" style="text-align: center; background-color: #4682B4; color: white;" |Runways |- !bgcolor="lightgrey" rowspan="2"|Direction !bgcolor="lightgrey" colspan="2"|Length !bgcolor="lightgrey" rowspan="2"|Surface |- !bgcolor="lightgrey"|ft !bgcolor="lightgrey"|m |- !align="left" valign="top"|10/28 |valign="top" align="right"|10,104 |valign="top" align="right"|3,080 |valign="top"|Paved |- !align="left" valign="top"|1/19 |valign="top" align="right"|7,001 |valign="top" align="right"|2,134 |valign="top"|Paved |- !align="left" valign="top"|6/24 (closed) |valign="top" align="right"|3,570 |valign="top" align="right"|1,088 |valign="top"|Paved

Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport , formerly Moisant Field, is located in Kenner, Louisiana and is the primary commercial airport for the New Orleans metropolitan area of southeast Louisiana. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, MSY served nearly 10 million passengers per year, nearly all of them non-connecting. As of September 2006, MSY's operations will be at 63% of their pre-Katrina status, measured by airlines' daily seat-count. Sixty-seven percent of daily roundtrip flights will have been restored at that point, as well as 75% of cities served nonstop.

Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport was once a major hub for Latin American travel from the United States. Nowadays, that travel mostly goes through other cities which serve as gateway hubs for international legacy-airlines.

It opened after World War II, replacing the older New Orleans Lakefront Airport (which kept the NEW and KNEW airport codes, and now serves general aviation) as the city's main airport. MSY airport was renamed in 2001 after Louis Armstrong, a famous jazz musician from New Orleans. The National Weather Service forecast office for the area moved to the suburb of Slidell, and now uses non-airport codes LIX and KLIX.

MSY is owned by the city of New Orleans (Orleans Parish), but is primarily located in the city of Kenner, which is in neighboring Jefferson Parish. A small portion of the longest runway is located in unincorporated Saint Charles Parish.

Contents

History

The airport was originally named after daredevil aviator John Moisant, who died in an airplane crash on this land (which was devoted to farming at the time) in 1910. The abbreviation MSY was derived from Moisant Stock Yards, as the old airport kept NEW.

Plans for Moisant Field were begun in 1940, as New Orleans' older Shushan Airport – now New Orleans Lakefront Airport (NEW), still serving private and corporate aircraft – was in need of expansion or replacement. With World War II the land became a government air base. It was returned to civilian control after the war, and commercial service began at Moisant Field in May of 1946.

On 19 September, 1947, the airport was temporarily shut down as it was flooded under 2 feet of water by the 1947 Fort Lauderdale Hurricane.

Hurricane Katrina

The airport was closed to commercial air traffic on August 28, 2005, shortly before Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, and it remained closed as floods affected the city. The Associated Press reported on August 31 that MSY would receive humanitarian flights, and that the airport "has no significant airfield damage and had no standing water in aircraft movement areas", although the airport did, as the article put it, "[sustain] damage to its roofs, hangars and fencing." [link] In early September, the airport was open only to military aircraft and humanitarian flights, and was serving as a staging center for evacuees.

MSY reopened to commercial flights on September 13, 2005. The airport opened with four flights operated by Delta Air Lines to Atlanta, and Northwest Airlines to Memphis. Slowly, service from other carriers began to resume with limited service by Southwest, Continental, and American Airlines. Eventually, all carriers announced their return with limited service with the exception of Frontier Airlines, Midwest Airlines and international carriers Air Canada and TACA. Continental Airlines became the first airline to return to pre-Katrina flight frequency levels in early 2006, though they remain below pre-Katrina levels in daily seat count.

February 2006 tornado

At about 2:30 EST in the morning on February 3, 2006, a tornado touched down on the grounds of MSY. The damage from the tornado was significant but primarily confined to Concourse C, where American, United, AirTran, and international arrivals were based. Many temporary repairs dating from Hurricane Katrina failed, including one roof patch, forcing airlines based in the concourse to relocate operations to vacant gates. Jetways and other ground equipment also sustained significant damage.

International services

Armstrong International's Concourse C, located in the airport's West Terminal, contains a fully-enclosed US Customs, Immigration, and FIS facility. Eleven of the concourse's 15 gates offer direct access to this area and are thus capable of accepting foreign arrivals from all over the world, on aircraft as large as Boeing 747-400s.

As of 2005, the only regularly scheduled international services from MSY were provided by Air Canada to Toronto and Grupo TACA to San Pedro Sula in Honduras. However, MSY has enjoyed 26 nonstop international destinations in its history-- six of them intercontinental. In the 1980s, the city was served by British Airways's flight between London and Mexico City using Lockheed L1011 aircraft, which made an intermediate stop at MSY. National Airlines also flew nonstop to Amsterdam, Paris (Orly), and Frankfurt from MSY using DC10 aircraft.

All international service into MSY was suspended while the FIS facility was closed post-Katrina. They reopened to an influx of chartered arrivals from London, Manchester, Bournemouth, and Nottingham, UK; all carrying tourists in for Mardi Gras and a departing cruise liner.

In May of 2006, International Charter and Tours (via the auspices of Miami Air International) announced it would begin [scheduled-basis] charter nonstop flights between New Orleans and the Honduran cities of San Pedro Sula and La Ceiba; to cater to the demand of Latin American traffic in the absence of TACA.

Terminals and airlines

Armstrong International has two terminals, East and West, connected by a central ticketing alley. Attached are four concourses, A, B, C, and D.

Concourse A

Concourse B

Concourse C

Except for certain Canadian, Caribbean, and private-jet operations; all nonstop international arrivals are handled by Concourse C.

Concourse D

The newest concourse, D contains a Delta Air Lines Crown Room Club, the sole such airline club remaining in Armstrong.

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

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