Buffalo Niagara International Airport is in Cheektowaga, New York, United States. The airport serves Buffalo, New York and Niagara Falls, New York United States, and the southern Golden Horseshoe region of Ontario, Canada. It is the third-busiest airport in the state of New York and the busiest inside of the Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan area. It is about east of Downtown Buffalo and southeast of Toronto (although driving distance is ). The airport covers .
History
Buffalo Niagara International Airport opened as Buffalo Municipal Airport in 1926 on former farmland, making it one of the country's oldest public airports. The original airport included a small terminal building, one hangar, and four cinder runways, each long by wide. Passenger and mail service began in December 1927, with service to Cleveland. A WPA-built Art Deco V-shaped terminal with a large cylindrical tower opened in 1939, replacing the original terminal. At this time, the airport had four paved runways: Runway 5/23 was long, Runway 13/31 (now 14/32) was long, Runway 1/19 was long, and Runway 8/26 was long. All of the runways were wide. Runways 1–19 and 8–26 were closed in the 1950s, and Runway 13–31 was renamed Runway 14–32.
The terminal's first expansion was completed in 1955. This addition expanded the terminal to 11 gates, tripled the terminal's square footage and added a restaurant and lounge. In 1959, the airport was acquired by the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority from the City of Buffalo and renamed Greater Buffalo International Airport.
The terminal received another overhaul in 1961 that added a new control tower and a concourse for American Airlines. The first scheduled jet service was American Boeing 727 service to/from New York in 1965; Runway 5–23 was extended northeast from to later that year. In 1968, an auxiliary terminal building, West Terminal, was announced. Construction began in 1969 and it opened in 1971 with nine gates. During this time, an all-new airport to be located in Wheatfield, New York was in the planning stages and so the West Terminal was intended to have a ten-year life expectancy.
Despite the addition of the West Terminal, the 1939 terminal, now named East Terminal, received another expansion and renovation completed in 1973. New ticket lobbies were built for American Airlines and United Airlines, the original portion was turned into a baggage claim area and jetways were added for the first time. An expansion and renovation of West Terminal was announced in 1977 and completed in 1982. Two gates were added, the front of the terminal received a two-story addition, new ceilings were installed, and the original blue exterior was repainted gray. This configuration of the airport remained for the next fifteen years.
A large Curtiss-Wright plant once existed at the Airport. In 1940, the company broke ground on the plant on the southeast side of the airport and dedicated it in August 1941. The building was sold to Westinghouse in 1946 after the end of World War II. Westinghouse sold the facility to Buffalo developer Paul Snyder in 1985, who attempted to repurpose the building as the Buffalo Airport Center industrial park. This was not successful and the building was shuttered in 1991. After sitting vacant for nearly a decade, the facility was demolished in 1999 to allow Runway 14/32 to be lengthened. In 2006 the main runway was repaved and extended , its first major upgrade since 1980 and the secondary runway was extended .
In 2008 some local residents made a short-lived attempt to rename the airport to "Buffalo Tim Russert International Airport" after popular news commentator and Buffalo native Tim Russert, who had died that year.
Current terminal
In 1991 it was decided a new terminal would make more sense than continued renovations. Construction of the new building designed by the Greater Buffalo International Airport (GBIA) Design Group, a joint venture composed of Kohn Pederson Fox Associates, CannonDesign, and William Nicholas Bodouva began in 1995 in between the two existing terminals.
The new $56 million terminal (at newly named Buffalo-Niagara International Airport) opened on November 3, 1997, with 15 gates. The old terminals were demolished immediately to allow expansion. The new building was expanded in 2001, increasing the number of gates to 24. The entire terminal has a total floor area of .