Phoenix Sky Harbor opened in 1928 as a privately built airfield so far from the small desert town that locals joked about "The Farm." The city of Phoenix bought the airport in 1935. Wartime training brought paved runways and steady growth.
The postwar Sun Belt boom transformed it: Terminal 2 opened in 1962 with its celebrated Paul Coze mural, Terminal 3 followed in 1979. The enormous Terminal 4 opened in 1990, eventually handling the great majority of passengers as Phoenix became one of America's twenty largest metropolitan areas.
America West Airlines made Sky Harbor its home in 1983 and grew into a national carrier from this single base, surviving bankruptcy and eventually acquiring US Airways in 2005, whose name it took. The merged company's 2013 combination with American Airlines kept Phoenix as a major hub in the enlarged network.
Southwest built a huge parallel operation of its own, making Sky Harbor a rare airport where a legacy hub and a low-cost giant coexist at scale. The PHX Sky Train opened in 2013 to link terminals with light rail and parking, extended to the rental car center in 2022. Aging Terminal 2 was retired in 2020.