Tulsa International Airport is a civil-military airport five miles (8 km) northeast of Downtown Tulsa, in Tulsa County, Oklahoma, United States. It was named Tulsa Municipal Airport when the city acquired it in 1929; it received its present name in 1963. The airport is the global maintenance headquarters for American Airlines.
During World War II Air Force Plant No. 3 was built on the southeast side of the airport, and Douglas Aircraft manufactured several types of aircraft there. After the war this facility was used by Douglas (later McDonnell Douglas) and Rockwell International (later Boeing) for aircraft manufacturing, modification, repair, and research. Spirit AeroSystems currently builds commercial airline parts for Boeing aircraft in part of the building and IC Bus Corporation assembles school buses in the other part. Spirit AeroSystems also builds Boeing wing and floor beam parts and Gulfstream wing parts in a facility on the east side of the airport, just north of runway 26. He moved and established a private airport on an 80-acre tract at the corner of Admiral Place and Sheridan Avenue. McIntyre Field had three hangars to house 40 aircraft and a beacon for landings after sundown.
McIntyre evidently closed his airport during the 1930s and merged it with R. F. Garland, a Tulsa oil man and owner of the Garland Airport at 51st and Sheridan Road for $350,000. He ran the airport and became the president of the new venture. This airport would later become the Brown Airport (after a number of owners and names including the commercial airport before it moved to 61st and Yale). In 1940, McIntyre accepted a position with Lockheed Corporation and moved to California.
Charles Lindbergh landed at McIntyre Field on September 30, 1927. He had been persuaded to visit Tulsa by William G. Skelly, who was then president of the local Chamber of Commerce, as well as a booster of the young aviation industry. In addition to being a wealthy oilman and founder of Skelly Oil Company, Skelly founded Spartan Aircraft Company. Lindbergh had already landed at Oklahoma City Municipal Airport, Bartlesville Municipal Airport and Muskogee's Hatbox Field. All of these were superior to the privately owned McIntyre Field. Lindbergh pointed this out at a banquet given that night in his honor. Using this vehicle, Skelly obtained signatures from several prominent Tulsa businessmen who put up $172,000 to buy for a municipal airport.
The first terminal building was a one-story wood and tar paper structure that looked like a warehouse. The landing strips and taxiways were mown grass. Still, it handled enough passengers in 1930 for Tulsa to claim that it had the busiest airport in the world. The Tulsa Municipal Airport handled 7,373 passengers in February 1930 and 9,264 in April. This outpaced Croydon Airport, Berlin Tempelhof Airport, and Paris Le Bourget Airport for those months. Braniff Airways stopped at Tulsa on its original route between Chicago and Wichita Falls, and TWA stopped at Tulsa on its original route between Columbus and Los Angeles. Later in the 1930s, Tulsa became a stop on the American Airlines Chicago-Dallas route.
thumb|Tulsa International Airport entrance, 2007; photo by Luis Tamayo
In 1932 the city opened a more elegant Art Deco terminal topped with a control tower, designed by Frederick V. Kershner, a lead architect working for Leon B. Senter. The structure was masonry with rounded corners, resulting in a futuristic appearance. Charles Short decorated the inside walls with a collection of early aviation photographs.
Although many Tulsans had concluded that the 1932 terminal was inadequate to serve the rapidly-growing city by the mid-1950s, the 1932 building served until Tulsa had to construct a new terminal, east of the old facility. The new terminal would be designed by noted architect Robert Lawton Jones, who later said that his design was inspired by Mies van der Rohe