Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport

Anchorage International Airport opened in December 1951. The federal government built it to give Alaska's largest city a modern airport away from nearby military bases. Its value showed up fast, once the Cold War changed global flight paths. Soviet airspace was closed to Western airlines. Planes flying between Europe and East Asia crossed the North Pole instead, saving hours compared with routes farther south.

Those long polar flights stopped in Anchorage to refuel. Through the 1960s and 1970s, the terminal buzzed daily with airlines such as Japan Air Lines, Lufthansa, Air France, and SAS. In 1964 the Good Friday earthquake wrecked the control tower and killed the controller working inside. The airport was soon rebuilt and kept growing. It became one of the most cosmopolitan airports in America at the time.

When Russian airspace opened in the early 1990s, passenger stopovers mostly ended, but cargo took their place. Anchorage sits within about nine and a half hours of nearly ninety percent of the world's industrialized nations. That makes it perfect for refueling cargo planes flying between Asia and North America. Renamed for Senator Ted Stevens in 2000, it now ranks among the world's busiest cargo airports by weight of goods moved.

Ted Stevens Airport runs three runways: long parallel strips 07R/25L and 07L/25R, plus a crosswind runway, meaning one built to handle side winds, called 15/33. The cargo ramps often look busier than the passenger terminals. FedEx and UPS run large sort and transfer buildings here, while Asian and European cargo planes stop to refuel and swap crews.

Alaska Airlines dominates the passenger side, which has a domestic terminal and a smaller international one. Summer brings a sharp rise in visitors from the lower 48 states. Nearby Lake Hood, the busiest seaplane base in the world, shares the airport's airspace and adds to the traffic controllers must manage.