Stapleton International Airport

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Denver Municipal Airport / Stapleton Airfield / Stapleton International Airport
Stapleton east to west view, January 1966
Characteristics
ICAO code KDEN
IATA code THE
Coordinates

39 ° 46 '45 "  N , 104 ° 52' 54"  W Coordinates: 39 ° 46 '45 "  N , 104 ° 52' 54"  W.
Basic data
opening 1929
closure 1995



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i11 i13

Area of ​​the former Stapleton Airport (2006)

The Stapleton International Airport was from 1929 to 1995 the main airport of Denver . It acted as a hub for Continental Airlines and United Airlines . In 1995, Stapleton was replaced by the newly built Denver International Airport outside of the city.

Stapleton marked on a map of the vicinity of Denver

history

Stapleton opened as Denver Municipal Airport on October 17, 1929 and later renamed Stapleton Airfield . The name change was made in honor of Benjamin Stapleton , the longtime Mayor of Denver from 1923 to 1947.

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

In 1928 he had a decisive influence on the planning of the airport.

The original airport was originally built by Ira Boyd Humphreys in 1919.

For April 1957, the official flight register at the airport recorded 38 departures for United, 12 Continental, 7 Braniff, 7 Frontier, 7 Western, 5 TWA and 1 Central.

In 1964, the airport received a new runway for jet aircraft and a new handling terminal. After the deregulation of air traffic, three major airlines operated a hub in Stapleton (Frontier Airlines, Continental Airlines, and United Airlines), which led to traffic jams. To counteract this, the runway (18/36) was built in the 1980s and the terminal was enlarged again. At the time of closure, Stapleton had six runways and five terminals.

Investments

UAL Douglas DC-6 , N37514, code 5414, parked on the northwest maintenance ramp of Stapleton Airport, in September 1966.

At the time of decommissioning, the airport has the following runways:

  • 17R / 35L (11,500 ft - 3,505 m)
  • 17L / 35R (12,000 ft - 3,657 m)
  • 8L / 26R (8,599 ft - 2,620 m)
  • 8R / 26L (10,004 ft - 3,049 m)
  • 7/25 (5,000 ft - 1,524 m)
  • 18/36 (6,500 ft - 1,981 m)

The terminal consisted of five departments:

Incidents

From 1951 until the closure in February 1995, there were 9 total losses of aircraft at Stapleton International Airport and in its vicinity. In 5 of them 89 people were killed. Extracts:

  • On November 1, 1955, a United Air Lines Douglas DC-6 B ( aircraft registration number N37559 ) exploded near Longmont (Colorado) at an altitude of 3300 meters, 35 miles north of the Denver-Stapleton star airport, after a bomb had detonated in the hold. All 44 people on board were killed. The bomb was deposited by the son of a passenger who had previously taken out life insurance on his mother (see also United Air Lines flight 629 ) .
  • On July 11, 1961, a United Air Lines Douglas DC-8-12 (N8040U) with 129 people on board had a hydraulic problem in flight. Two tires burst during the emergency landing at Stapleton Airport. The plane turned and caught fire. The fire fighting and rescue of the people was started from an understaffed and poorly equipped department of the airport. The municipal fire brigade was not called in or a request for help from the nearby US Air Force base was waived. Seven months before the disaster, an inspector found that the airport fire service and emergency equipment were inadequate. In particular, he criticized the insufficient water capacity and the missing foam extinguishing system. Denver city officials nonetheless praised the success and efforts of the airport fire department. 17 people died in the accident (one of them from the ground crew), 84 people got away with injuries (see also United Air Lines flight 859 ) .
  • On November 15, 1987, a Douglas DC-9-14 operated by Continental Airlines (N626TX) crashed shortly after take-off. There were 28 fatalities, 54 inmates survived. The failure of the second de-icing after a delay in take-off and the lack of experience of both pilots were found to be the cause of the crash (see also Continental Airlines flight 1713 ) .

Decommissioning

The last commercial flight from Stapleton was on February 27, 1995. In the evening the airport was finally closed and the new Denver International Airport took over the official IDs DEN and KDEN from Stapleton.

conversion

The former airport site was one of the largest urban development projects in the United States. The groundbreaking ceremony for the development of the approximately 1,900 hectare site took place in 2001. Today, the new district is connected to local rail transport via a train station (Central Park Station) on line A. United Airlines operates a pilot training center in parts of the old building. In June 2015, United announced that it would close the training center operated in parallel at Houston Intercontinental Airport and expand it accordingly in Denver. Denver Stapleton will be United Airlines' only pilot training center.

Web links

Commons : Stapleton International Airport  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Accident statistics Denver-Stapleton International Airport , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on March 22, 2017.
  2. ↑ Air-Britain Archive: Casualty compendium part 65 (English), June 1997, pp. 97/53.
  3. ↑ accident report DC-6B N37559 , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on 26 August 2017th
  4. ↑ Accident report DC-8-12 N8040U , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on March 23, 2017.
  5. ↑ accident report B 727-200 N88777 , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on 22 March 2017th
  6. ^ Accident report DC-9-14 N626TX , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on March 22, 2017.
  7. ↑ https://www.stapletondenver.com/community/our-story/stapleton-reinvented/