1931: Thousands of People and Dozens of Planes Show Up for the Launch of a Regional Airport in Connecticut

August 29, 1931

New Haven Municipal Airport in south-central Connecticut was formally opened to great fanfare. This public airport is three miles (4.8 kilometers) southeast east of the downtown section of the city of New Haven. Groundbreaking ceremonies for this airport had taken place on November 11, 1929.

The Hartford Courant featured a front-page article on the opening of New Haven Municipal Airport. This newspaper reported, “More than 15,000 persons saw a program of stunts performed by more than 60 airplanes of all types, privately and government-owned.” The Hartford Courant also noted, “Visiting aviators were unanimous in their praise of the field surface and joined in complimenting Airport Manager Jack Tweed on the success of today’s program.”

The airport was renamed in honor of Tweed in 1961. Tweed-New Haven Regional Airport has been categorized by the Federal Aviation Administration as a non-hub primary commercial service facility. It is one of only two airports in Connecticut with regularly scheduled commercial flights service. The other airport with this designation is Bradley International Airport in the town of Windsor Locks in the north-central part of the state.

Photo Credit: Bfwalach (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en)

Additional information on airports in Connecticut is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_Connecticut