When it opened in 1962, the 'main terminal' at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport boasted a facility with 600,000 square feet and 24 gates on two concourses. Up to 14,000 travelers per day could be handled efficiently, and the cost of just $8.5 million was deemed worthy of the region's growing desire to be an important aviation hub.
Today, the former main terminal which later became the Lindbergh Terminal and is now designated as Terminal 1, has 2.8 million square feet, 117 gates and seven concourses. It's exponential growth was first due to locally headquartered Northwest Airlines, and even further by North Central Airlines merger with Southern Airways and Hughes Airwest, eventually forming a much larger and stronger Republic Airlines, also based in the Twin Cities.
When Northwest acquired Republic in 1986, the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport was firmly established as one of the largest and most important airline hubs in the U.S. MSP, now 3-plus years after Northwest Airlines was purchased by Delta Air Lines, is the second largest hub for Delta with nearly 500 daily departures and is reportedly a very profitable fortress hub for the Atlanta-based carrier.
Today, nearly 80,000 people utilize MSP on a daily basis. Where the airport handled about two million travelers in 1962, in 2011 that number had increased to 33 million passengers on all airlines combined. Included in the recent figures are passenger numbers for Southwest Airlines, AirTran Airways, Sun Country Airlines and Icelandair, all of which serve the airport from the now 10-year old Terminal 2/Humphrey on the south side of the field.
Of the original airlines serving the airport, only United Airlines remains. Braniff International, Eastern, North Central, Northwest, Ozark and Western are long gone, either by way of liquidation, acquisition or merger.
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