Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport
Facts on DTW
Detroit-Wayne Major, as it was then named, became the first inland airport in the United States certified for jet airliners in 1958, the same year it received new long-range radar and its present name; Pan Am and BOAC had already begun using the field for transatlantic connections in 1954 and 1956.
Source: Wikipedia
Detroit Metropolitan is named for Wayne County, one of several U.S. counties honoring Revolutionary War general Anthony Wayne, nicknamed 'Mad Anthony' for his aggressive tactics; he later commanded U.S. forces on the Ohio frontier after St. Clair's defeat and helped negotiate the peace that followed.
Source: Wikipedia
Wayne County, founded in 1796, broke ground on its own airfield in 1928 with a $2 million bond and dedicated Wayne County Airport on September 4, 1930; the county's name -- and the general it honors -- has stayed attached through every rename since, up to today's Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport.
Source: Wikipedia
The McNamara Terminal's Concourse A runs roughly one mile end to end -- the longest linear airport concourse in the United States and the second-longest in the world, behind only Terminal 1 at Kansai International in Japan -- with moving walkways and an elevated tram covering its length.
Source: Wikipedia
The terminal itself is named for a different figure than the airport: Edward H. McNamara, the sitting Wayne County executive when the $1.2 billion, 122-gate midfield terminal opened in February 2002 as the first major U.S. airport terminal to open after the September 11 attacks.
Source: Wikipedia
Covering 4,850 acres with six runways and 129 gates, DTW handles roughly eight times the passenger traffic of Michigan's next-busiest airport, Gerald R. Ford International in Grand Rapids, and more than all the state's other airports combined.
Source: Wikipedia
Metro Airport is Delta Air Lines' second-largest hub, a role it inherited from Northwest Airlines, which ran its hub there from 1986 until Northwest merged into Delta in 2008.
Source: Wikipedia
An underground pedestrian corridor called the Light Tunnel links the McNamara Terminal's concourses beneath the airport ramp, its sculpted glass panels lit in a multicolored show synchronized to an original score by composer Victor Alexeeff -- one of the first large-scale uses of color-changing LED lighting in the U.S.
Source: Wikipedia