Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport (IATA: ATL, ICAO: KATL, FAA LID: ATL) is the primary international airport serving Atlanta and its surrounding metropolitan area, in the U.S. state of Georgia. The airport is located 10 mi (16 km; 8.7 nmi) south of the Downtown Atlanta district. It is named after former Atlanta mayors William B. Hartsfield and Maynard Jackson.[4][5] The airport covers 4,700 acres (7.3 sq mi; 19 km2) of land and has five parallel runways which are aligned in an east-west direction. There are three runways that are 9,000 feet (2,743 m) long, one runway that is 10,000 feet (3,048 m) long, and the longest runway at ATL measures 12,390 feet (3,776 m) long, which can handle the Airbus A380.[6][5][7] Since 1998, Hartsfield-Jackson has been the world's busiest airport by passenger traffic. In 2023, the airport served over 104.6 million passengers, the most of any airport in the world.[8] Hartsfield-Jackson is also the world's busiest airport by aircraft movements.
Hartsfield–Jackson is the corporate headquarters and primary hub of Delta Air Lines. With just over 1,000 flights a day to 225 domestic and international destinations, the Delta hub is the world's largest airline hub[9][10] and is considered the first mega-hub in America.[11] Additionally, Hartsfield–Jackson is also the home of Delta's Technical Operations Center, which is the airline's primary maintenance, repair and overhaul arm.[12] Aside from Delta, Hartsfield-Jackson is also an operating base for low-cost carriers Frontier Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and Spirit Airlines. The airport has international service within North America and to Latin America, Europe, Africa, Middle East and East Asia.[13]
The airport is mostly in unincorporated areas of Clayton County,[14] but it spills into the city limits of Atlanta,[15] College Park,[16] and Hapeville,[17] in territory extending into Fulton County. The airport's domestic terminal is served by MARTA's Red and Gold rail lines.
Hartsfield–Jackson began with a five-year, rent-free lease on 287 acres (116 ha) that was an abandoned auto racetrack named The Atlanta Speedway. The lease was signed on April 16, 1925, by Mayor Walter Sims, who committed the city to develop it into an airfield. As part of the agreement, the property was renamed Candler Field after its former owner, Coca-Cola tycoon and former Atlanta mayor Asa Candler.[18] The first flight into Candler Field was September 15, 1926, a Florida Airways mail plane flying from Jacksonville, Florida. In May 1928, Pitcairn Aviation began service to Atlanta, followed in June 1930 by Delta Air Service. Those two airlines, later known as Eastern Air Lines and Delta Air Lines, respectively, would both use Atlanta as their chief hubs.[19] The airport's weather station became the official location for Atlanta's weather observations on September 1, 1928, and records by the National Weather Service.[20]
Atlanta was a busy airport from its inception, and by the end of 1930, it was third behind New York City and Chicago for regular daily flights with sixteen arriving and departing.[21] Candler Field's first control tower opened March 1939.[22] The March 1939 Official Aviation Guide shows fourteen weekday airline departures: ten Eastern and four Delta.[23]
In October 1940, the U.S. government declared it a military airfield and the United States Army Air Forces operated Atlanta Army Airfield jointly with Candler Field. The Air Force used the airport primarily to service many types of transient combat aircraft. During World War II, the airport doubled in size and set a record of 1,700 takeoffs and landings in a single day, making it the nation's busiest in terms of flight operation. Atlanta Army Airfield closed after the war.[22]
In 1942, Candler Field was renamed Atlanta Municipal Airport and by 1948, more than one million passengers passed through a war surplus hangar that served as a terminal building.[24] Delta and Eastern had extensive networks from ATL, though Atlanta had no nonstop flights beyond Texas, St. Louis, and Chicago until 1961. Southern Airways appeared at ATL after the war and had short-haul routes around the Southeast until 1979.
In 1957, Atlanta saw its first jet airliner: a prototype Sud Aviation Caravelle that was touring the country arrived from Washington, D.C.[25] The first scheduled turbine airliners were Capital Viscounts in June 1956; the first scheduled jets were Delta DC-8s in September 1959. The first trans-Atlantic flight was a Delta/Pan Am interchange DC-8 to Europe via Washington starting in 1964; the first scheduled international nonstops were Eastern flights to Mexico City and Jamaica in 1971–72. Nonstops to Europe started in 1978 and to Asia in 1992–93.
Atlanta claimed to be the country's busiest airport, with more than two million passengers passing through in 1957 and, between noon and 2 p.m. each day, it became the world's busiest airport.[22] (The April 1957 OAG shows 165 weekday departures from Atlanta, including 45 between 12:05 and 2:00 PM and 20 between 2:25 and 4:25 AM.) Chicago Midway had 414-weekday departures, including 48 between 12:00 and 2:00 PM. In 1957, Atlanta was the country's ninth-busiest airline airport by flight count and about the same by passenger count.[26]
In late 1957, work began on a new $21 million terminal, which opened on May 3, 1961. Consisting of six pier concourses radiating from a central building,[27] the terminal was the largest in the country and could handle over six million travelers a year; the first year, nine and a half million people passed through.[28] In March 1962, the longest runway (9/27, now 8R) was 7,860 feet (2,400 m); runway 3 was 5,505 feet (1,678 m) and runway 15 was 7,220 feet (2,200 m) long.
In 1971, the airport was named William B. Hartsfield Atlanta Airport in honor of Atlanta mayor William B. Hartsfield after his death. The name change took effect on February 28, which would have been Hartsfield's 81st birthday. The new name would be relatively brief, as it would be changed later in 1971 to William B. Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport with the growth of flights to and from Atlanta outside North America.[4]
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To address the significant increase in air traffic that outstripped the capacity of the 1961 terminal, and after years of planning and design, construction began on the present midfield terminal complex in 1977 under the administration of Mayor Maynard Jackson. It was billed as the largest construction project in the South, costing $500 million. The complex was designed by Stevens & Wilkinson, Smith Hinchman & Grylls, and Minority Airport Architects & Planners.[29] The new complex, initially consisting of the North and South Terminals, Concourses A through D, and the northern half of the present-day Concourse T (which served as the International Terminal), opened on September 21, 1980, on time and under budget.[30] It was designed to accommodate up to 55 million passengers per year and covered 2.5 million square feet (230,000 m2). In December 1984, a 9,000-foot (2,700 m) fourth parallel runway was completed, and another runway was extended to 11,889 feet (3,624 m) the following year.[22] To accommodate increases in international air traffic, a southern extension of Concourse T opened in 1987, and Concourse E opened in 1994 in advance of Atlanta hosting the 1996 Summer Olympics, with Concourse T subsequently being converted to use by domestic flights. MARTA rail service was extended to Hartsfield with the opening of the Airport station in 1988 (the station itself was constructed in 1979-80 as part of the terminal).
In 1999, Hartsfield–Jackson's leadership established the Development Program: "Focus On the Future," involving multiple construction projects to prepare the airport to handle a projected demand of 121 million passengers in 2015. The program was originally budgeted at $5.4 billion over ten years, but the total was revised as of 2007 to over $9 billion.[31]
In 2001, construction of an over 9,000-foot (2,700 m) fifth runway (10–28) began. It was completed at the cost of $1.28 billion and opened in 2006.[32] It bridges Interstate 285 (the Perimeter) on the airport's south side, making Hartsfield–Jackson the nation's only currently active civil airport to have a runway above an interstate (although Runway 17R/35L at Stapleton International Airport in Denver, Colorado, crossed Interstate 70 until that airport closed in 1995). The massive project, which involved putting fill dirt eleven stories high in some places, destroyed some surrounding neighborhoods and dramatically changed the scenery of Flat Rock Cemetery and Hart Cemetery, both on the airport property.[33] It was added to help ease traffic problems caused by landing small- and mid-size aircraft on the runways used by larger planes such as the Boeing 777, which need longer runways than the smaller planes. With the fifth runway, Hartsfield–Jackson is one of only a few airports that can perform triple simultaneous landings.[34] The fifth runway was expected to increase the capacity for landings and take-offs by 40%, from an average of 184 flights per hour to 237 flights per hour.[35]
Along with the fifth runway, a new control tower was built to see the entire runway length. The new control tower is the tallest in the United States, over 398 feet (121 m) tall. The old control tower, at 231 ft, was demolished in 2006.[36]
