2 December 1939

 

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LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York opens.

The world’s greatest and most costly airport, the $38,000,000 LaGuardia Field at North Beach, Queens, was opened to scheduled airline traffic in history today when a DC-3 Douglas transport plane arrived from Chicago and Pittsburgh.

LaGuardia Airport is an airport in the northern part of the New York City borough of Queens in the United States. It is on the waterfront of Flushing Bay and Bowery Bay in East Elmhurst and borders the neighborhoods of East Elmhurst, Astoria, and Jackson Heights. The airport is the third busiest airport serving New York City, and the twentieth most busy in the United States. LaGuardia Airport covers 680 acres 280 in total. LaGuardia, and Newark Liberty International airports combine to create the largest airport system in the United States, second in the world in terms of passenger traffic, and first in the world in terms of total flight operations.

In 2011, the airport handled 24.1 million passengers. In 2015, LaGuardia Airport had a strong growth in passenger traffic; about 31.4 million passengers used the airport, a 14.2 percent increase from the previous year. LaGuardia is the busiest airport in the United States without any non-stop service to Europe. Most transcontinental flights use JFK or Newark, as do all international flights except those from airports within the perimeter that also have United States border preclearance, there is no border control facility at the airport.