Chicago Midway International Airport
Facts on MDW
The airport began in 1923 as Chicago Air Park, a 320-acre plot with a single cinder runway used mainly for airmail. The city leased it in 1926, and by 1928 it had grown to twelve hangars and four runways lit for night flying.
Source: Wikipedia
The airport is named for the Battle of Midway, a June 1942 naval battle in which the U.S. Pacific Fleet ambushed and sank all four of the Imperial Japanese Navy's fleet carriers -- Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu -- near Midway Atoll. Coming six months after Pearl Harbor, it is widely regarded as the turning point of the Pacific War.
Source: Wikipedia
Chicago Municipal Airport was renamed Chicago Midway International Airport in July 1949, in honor of that battle. The now-defunct Midway Airlines, once headquartered at the airport, later took its name from the airport itself.
Source: Wikipedia
By 1932 the airport was calling itself the world's busiest, with over 100,846 passengers on 60,947 flights that year. It later passed LaGuardia to reclaim that title from 1948 until 1960, before New York's jet-age airports overtook it for good.
Source: Wikipedia
Midway is boxed in on all sides by city development within a single square mile, so its runway landing thresholds are displaced for obstacle clearance -- meaning the available landing distance is shorter than the available takeoff distance on the same runway.
Source: Wikipedia
Midway's short runways couldn't handle the four-engine jets that arrived in 1959, so airlines shifted their jet traffic to the newly opened O'Hare instead. For two years, from July 1962 to July 1964, Chicago Helicopter was Midway's only scheduled carrier.
Source: Wikipedia
Southwest Airlines has operated at Midway since 1985 and now carries more than 90% of the airport's passengers, making it by far the dominant carrier at what was once Chicago's only commercial airport.
Source: Wikipedia
The CTA Orange Line has connected Midway directly to Chicago's Loop since 1993, taking roughly 20 to 25 minutes -- one of the few U.S. airports reachable that quickly by rail from a downtown core.
Source: Wikipedia