There may be but a handful of vintage airport terminals left in the United States, and the very fact that some exist at all depends on some specific circumstances. Typically they are found at airports that for whatever reason could not, or did not, expand at a rate to justify destroying their original terminal and replacing it with a larger, more functional structure. In most cases it was simply a case of the old airport's being bypassed by a new, larger facility. In those instances where the old airports were not redeveloped, their terminals were left behind as a sort of time capsule. New York’s Floyd Bennett Field was one such example. That facility was doomed by its geography, supplanted by upstarts La Guardia and later Idlewild Airports (today, JFK International) simply because they were closer and more convenient to Manhattan. It was given to the U.S. Navy, which left the terminal largely unchanged, and then to the National Parks Service, which finished the restoration of the deteriorated building back to its original 1930s appearance two years ago.
Another such architectural gem has joined the ranks of the few with the recent restoration and rededication of the former passenger terminal at New Orleans Lakefront Airport. While I have written about flood-prone Lakefront several times, I was finally able to visit it in January during my trip to New Orleans to cover NBAA’s annual Schedulers and Dispatchers Conference.
A lifelong aviation enthusiast who joined AIN in 2007, Curt came to the publication from the broadcast industry where he was a national science and technology television reporter and producer. He writes on the FBO field, aviation finance, and sustainable aviation and occasionally contributes to AIN sister publication Business Jet Traveler. Curt was a member of the AINtv reporting staff that won the 2008 Aerospace Journalist of the Year award for Best Airshow Daily. That same year, he was a finalist for another AJOYA award. He earned an AJOYA for Best Business Aviation Submission in 2018 and was a finalist in that category in 2021. He received the National Air Transportation Association’s Aviation Journalist Award in 2012 and won a Pegasus Sapphire Business Aviation Award for outstanding journalism in 2021.
Before joining AIN, Curt worked with Consumer Reports’ television division, CRTV, and for several local television news staffs. An honors graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he earned a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University in 1995. Curt lives in New York State with his wife and two young sons.
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