page_title: Austin–Bergstrom International Airport
section_title: Opening
hierarchical_section_title: Austin–Bergstrom International Airport / History / Opening
caption_attribution_description: English: Approaching Austin Bergstrom International Airport. The upper-level roadway is for departures, while the lower-level roadway is for arrivals.
context_page_description: Austin–Bergstrom International Airport or ABIA is a Class C international airport located in Austin, the capital of Texas, serving the Greater Austin metropolitan area.
  Located about 5 miles southeast of Downtown Austin, it covers 4,242 acres and has two runways and three helipads. It is on the site of what was Bergstrom Air Force Base. The airport and U.S. Air Force base were named after Captain John August Earl Bergstrom, an officer who served with the 19th Bombardment Group. The airport replaced Robert Mueller Municipal Airport as Austin's main airport.
  The airport is the busiest in Texas outside the Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston metropolitan areas. As of 2018, there are 510 arrivals and departures on the typical weekday to 76 destinations in North America and Europe. In 2019, AUS set a record by serving 17,343,729 passengers, the most in the airport's 20 year history.
context_section_description: Austin–Bergstrom International Airport opened to the public on May 23, 1999 with a 12,250 feet (3,730 m) runway, among the nation's longest commercial runways. The Barbara Jordan passenger terminal was originally conceived as an 18-gate terminal facility with a footprint of a bit more than 500,000 square feet (46,000 m²). However, ABIA was expanded during construction to have 24 contact gates with jet bridges (named Gate 2-Gate 25) and one gate without a jet bridge (named Gate 1) for a total footprint of 660,000 sqft.
  The opening of the airport coincided with a considerable number of nonstop flights being operated into Austin from the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, as American Airlines had decided to compete with Southwest Airlines' scheduled service between Dallas Love Field (DAL) and Austin in addition to American and Delta Air Lines service between Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) and AUS.  At the time, there were 42 nonstop flights every weekday being operated with mainline jet aircraft from the two primary airports located in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex to Austin. By contrast, this same OAG lists a combined total of 24 nonstop flights every weekday at this time from the two primary airports serving the Houston area, Hobby Airport (HOU) and Intercontinental Airport (IAH), to Austin.
caption: Approaching AUS. The upper-level roadway is for departures, while the lower-level roadway is for arrivals.
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