Memphis International Airport


Memphis International Airport is a civil-military airport located southeast of Downtown Memphis in Shelby County, Tennessee. It covers and has four runways.
It is home to the FedEx Express global hub, which processes many of the company's packages. Non-stop FedEx destinations from Memphis include cities across the continental United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and South America. From 1993 to 2009, Memphis had the largest cargo operations of any airport worldwide. MEM dropped to the second position in 2010, just behind Hong Kong; however, it remains the busiest cargo airport in the United States and in the Western Hemisphere.
On the passenger side, MEM averages over 80 passenger flights per day. The 164th Airlift Wing of the Tennessee Air National Guard is based at the co-located Memphis Air National Guard Base, operating C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft.

History

Memphis Municipal Airport, dedicated in 1929, opened on a plot of farmland just over from downtown Memphis. In its early years the airport had three hangars and an unpaved runway; passenger and air mail service was provided by American Airlines and Chicago and Southern Air Lines. In 1939 Eastern Air Lines arrived; that March, Eastern had one departure a day to Muscle Shoals and beyond, American had four east/west and C&S had four north/south.
During World War II the United States Army Air Forces Air Transport Command 4th Ferrying Group used Memphis while sending new aircraft overseas. In April 1951 the runways were 6000-ft 2/20, 6530-ft 9/27, 4370-ft 14/32 and 4950-ft 17/35; the airport was all north of Winchester Road during the 1950s.
The April 1957 OAG shows 64 weekday departures: 25 on Delta, 18 American, 7 Southern, 5 Eastern, 4 Braniff, 3 Trans-Texas and 2 Capital. American DC-6s flew non-stop to Washington and New York, but westward non-stops didn't reach beyond Ft Worth and Kansas City until American started Los Angeles in 1964. The first scheduled jets were Delta 880s ORD-MEM-MSY and back, starting in July–August 1960.
The current terminal was designed by Mann & Harrover and cost $6.5 million. It opened on June 7, 1963 and Memphis Municipal changed its name to Memphis International in 1969. In 1985–86 Republic Airlines began flights to Mexico. The terminal was expanded for $31.6 million in 1974, adding two new concourses and extending the others, which were designed by Roy P. Harrover & Associates.

Hub status

was an important regional carrier at Memphis in the 1960s; it merged into Republic Airlines in 1979 as the first large merger after the passage of the Airline Deregulation Act. With the dismantling of the Civil Aeronautics Board flight approval requirements, airlines began developing around a large hub model as opposed to the former point-to-point networks that were common before deregulation. Republic established Memphis as a hub operation in 1985 before merging into Northwest Airlines in 1986. Northwest operated around 300 daily flights at the peak of the hub, including international flights to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean as well as a transatlantic flight to Amsterdam.
Federal Express began operations in Memphis in 1973. It opened its current "SuperHub" facility on the north side of the airport in 1981, and maintains a large presence to the present day.
In 2008 the airport began expanding its control tower and parking garages. The new tower cost $72.6 million and is 336 feet tall, more than double the old tower height. An $81 million, 7-story parking garage replaced two surface lots adding 6,500 parking spaces. Eleven million dollars was spent on a covered moving walkway between the garages and the terminal.
After the acquisition of Northwest by Delta Air Lines in 2008, flights were scaled back until Delta closed the hub in 2013. Passenger traffic in Memphis declined for the next several years until it bottomed out at 3.5 million in 2015.

Recent years

In 2014 the Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority announced a planned $114 million renovation of the airport. This renovation included demolishing the largely-vacant south ends of concourses A and C, which would allow aircraft to more easily access the larger B concourse. The remainder of the A and C concourses would remain and be ready to use for any potential growth in the future. In addition, the plan called for the widening and modernization of the B concourse, which most flights would be directed to when the renovation was complete. The renovation, which was expected to start in late 2015 and end around 2020, would leave the airport with about 60 gates.
The initial project was only partly completed, with the south end of the A concourse demolished. Memphis officials decided to rethink the plans; several aspects of the project changed. The plan had called for renovating and widening Concourse B, the updated plan includes a full redesign of most of the concourse. The B Concourse will be closed during construction, and airlines and tenants will move to the A and C Concourses during that time. The south end of the C Concourse will remain intact until the B Concourse is completed and airlines have moved from C to B. The southwest leg of the B Concourse will be updated in a future phase, and will only be utilized in the near term for passengers from inbound international flights.
On April 4, 2018 Delta Air Lines moved to the A Concourse and Allegiant Air to the C Concourse; construction on the B concourse began in September 2018.
Thanks to factors such as the addition of Southwest Airlines and other low cost carriers, airport traffic has been rebounding in recent years.

Facilities

Terminal

Memphis International Airport has one terminal and three concourses. In 2021, all flights will consolidate to Concourse B and A and C will be mothballed.
Concourse A has 9 gates and serves Delta Airlines and Southwest Airlines.
Concourse B has 42 gates. Delta Air Lines operates a Sky Club lounge outside Concourse B. The concourse contains the airport's U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility, which is used by Vacation Express and international diversions. Concourse B is closed for work on the airport's modernization project, expected to be completed in 2021.
Concourse C has 18 gates and serves American Airlines, United Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Allegiant Air, and Air Canada.

Airlines and destinations

Passenger

Cargo

Statistics

Top destinations

Airline market share

Accidents and incidents