Greater Southwest International Airport

Infobox Airport
name = Greater Southwest International Airport
caption =
IATA = GSW
ICAO = KGSW
FAA = GSW
type = Public
owner = Abandoned
operator = Allied Fueling Company
city-served =
location = Fort Worth, Texas
elevation-f = 568
elevation-m = 173
coordinates = coord|32|49|53|N|097|02|57|W|type:airport_region:US
r1-number = 17/35
r1-length-f = 8,460
r1-length-m = 2,579
r1-surface = Concrete
r2-number = 13/31
r2-length-f = 6,400
r2-length-m = 1,951
r2-surface = Concrete

Greater Southwest International Airport Airport codes|GSW|KGSW was the commercial airport serving Fort Worth, Texas from 1953 until 1972. Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (or DFW) opened in 1974 on property adjacent to the north side of the airport.

As far back as 1927, the cities of Fort Worth and Dallas had unsuccessfully proposed a regional airport that would serve the need of the entire metropolitan area. This did not come to fruition, and after World War II, Fort Worth decided to move its commercial aviation operations from Meacham Field to a new facility, Amon Carter Field. Fort Worth annexed a finger of land to the east, thus extending the city limits to encompass the new site.

American, Braniff, Central, Continental, Delta, Eastern, and Trans-Texas Airways were among the carriers who operated from the airport, which had three paved runways and a rather elaborate terminal building (including gold-plated murals). However, the airport never reached its operating capacity, and saw its traffic steadily dwindle while traffic at Love Field continued to grow.

On December 20, 1959, jet service began with American Airlines Boeing 707 flights between Carter Field and Los Angeles.

In 1960, the airport was renamed Greater Southwest International Airport in a failed attempt to try to increase passenger traffic. In this same year, the city of Fort Worth purchased the airport to try to marginalize Dallas Love Field.

During the mid-1960s, the Federal Aviation Administration, having grown weary of funding separate airports for Dallas and Fort Worth, announced it would no longer support both facilities. The Civil Aeronautics Board ordered the two cities to finally come up with a working plan for one jointly-operated regional airport. A parcel of land located directly north of Greater Southwest was selected for the creation of Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. As soon as Dallas-Fort Worth International opened, the FAA closed the runways at Greater Southwest as a safety precaution to avoid accidents.

On 30 May 1972, Delta Air Lines Flight 9570 crashed at Greater Southwest International Airport while performing "touch and go" training landings. The National Transportation Safety Board determined that wake turbulence from another training flight, an American Airlines DC-10, had caused the Delta DC-9 to lose control as it neared touchdown. As this was a training flight, only four people were aboard the flight 9570 at the time of the crash: three crew and an FAA operations inspector. All were killed. [ [http://amelia.db.erau.edu/reports/ntsb/aar/AAR73-03.pdf NTSB Aircraft Accident Report, dated 13 March 1973, URL retrieved 25 February 2007] ] [cite book
last = Job
first = Macarthur
authorlink = Macarthur Job
coauthors =
title = Air Disaster, Volume 1
publisher = Aerospace Publications Pty Ltd
date = 1994
location = Fyshwick, Australian Capital Territory
pages = 79-87
isbn = 1875671110]

Following the closure of the airport, Runway 18/36 became Amon Carter Boulevard, and for several years the old runway served in this capacity before it was torn up and replaced with an actual street. As of 2008, a small section of the taxiway and run-up area of Runway 18 still exists on the north side of State Highway 183. American Airlines expanded its headquarters to new buildings on the airport site during the 1980s and 1990s (the airline's former hangar had remained in use as a reservations center for several years before it was finally demolished). The airport's IATA airport code, GSW, is still in use by the American Airlines Flight Academy, which sits across State Highway 360 from the former airport site.

References

* " [http://www.airfields-freeman.com/TX/Airfields_TX_FtWorth_NE.htm Northeast Fort Worth Area] ". Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields". URL accessed on October 14, 2005.

External links

* [http://oldterminals.topcities.com/fort%20worth.html Old Airport Terminals]