Charlotte Douglas International Airport opened in 1936 as Charlotte Municipal Airport, a Works Progress Administration project during the Depression. Was renamed in 1954 to honor Ben Elbert Douglas Sr., the mayor who had championed its creation. The airport's fortunes changed decisively in the late 1970s when hometown carrier Piedmont Airlines, after deregulation, built Charlotte into its principal hub, proving that a mid-sized Southern city could anchor a major connecting operation.
Piedmont merged into USAir in 1989, and through the US Airways era Charlotte grew steadily as the carrier's largest and most profitable hub, gaining a fourth runway in 2010. When US Airways merged with American Airlines in 2013, Charlotte became one of American's cornerstone hubs, today ranking as its second-busiest after Dallas-Fort Worth and among the world's ten busiest airports by aircraft movements.
The airport is famous for the white rocking chairs scattered through its atrium, a nod to Southern hospitality. A sweeping capital program called Destination CLT has been expanding concourses, overhauling the terminal lobby. Preparing a fourth parallel runway to accommodate a connecting machine that routes tens of millions of passengers a year through the Carolinas.