Chicago Municipal Airport

Chicago Municipal Airport Soundex Code A616

In 1926 the city leased Midway Airport and named it Chicago Municipal Airport on December 12, 1927. By 1928, the airport had twelve hangars and four runways, lit for night operations.

In 1931 a new passenger terminal opened at 62nd Street; the following year the airport claimed to be the "World's Busiest" with over 100,846 passengers on 60,947 flights. (The July 1932 Official Aviation Guide (OAG) showed 206 scheduled airline departures a week.)

The March 1939 OAG shows 47 weekday departures: 13 on United, 13 American, 9 TWA, 4 Northwest, and two each on Eastern, Braniff, Pennsylvania Central, and C&S. New York's airport (Newark, then LaGuardia by the end of 1939) was then the busiest airline airport in the United States, but Chicago Municipal Airport passed LaGuardia in 1948 and kept the title until 1960.

More construction was funded in part by $1 million from the Works Progress Administration; the airport expanded to fill the square mile in 1938–41 after a court ordered the Chicago and Western Indiana Railroad to reroute tracks that had crossed the square along the northern edge of the older field.

In July 1949 the airport was renamed Midway Airport, named after the Battle of Midway.