Stapleton International Airport

Stapleton International Airport
Stapleton highlighted on a map of Denver neighborhoods
IATA: DEN – ICAO: KDEN
Summary
Airport type	Public, Defunct
Serves	Stapleton, Denver, Colorado, USA
Location	Stapleton, Denver, Colorado
Hub for	Continental Airlines Frontier Airlines People Express TWA United Airlines Western Airlines
Coordinates	39°45′38.6″N 104°53′31.1″W / 39.760722°N 104.891972°WCoordinates: 39°45′38.6″N 104°53′31.1″W / 39.760722°N 104.891972°W
Map
DEN Location within Colorado

Stapleton International Airport was the primary airport serving Denver, Colorado, United States from 1929 to 1995. At different times it served as a hub for Continental Airlines, Frontier Airlines, People Express, TWA, United Airlines and Western Airlines.

In 1995, Stapleton was replaced by Denver International Airport. It has since been decommissioned and the property redeveloped as a retail and residential neighborhood.

History

Looking west, January 1966. Only concourses A, B, and C existed then. A United Airlines Pilot Training Center was later built on the vacant land between the airport's west boundary and the housing tracts.

Looking north, January 1966. Runway 35 became 35L, after 35R was built. The old United Airlines pilot training center buildings, on the airport proper, were still in operation. A UAL DC-8 pilot training flight is making a missed approach, complete with its shadow.

USGS aerial photo of Stapleton International Airport looking north, June 1993, shortly before its closure. Runway 17R/35L crosses Interstate 70 at its midpoint.

Former Stapleton International Airport from the air (6 February 2006)

Two Convair 580s of the based Aspen Airways at Stapleton in 1986

Stapleton opened on October 17, 1929, as Denver Municipal Airport. Its name became Stapleton Airfield after a 1944 expansion, in honor of Benjamin F. Stapleton, the city's mayor most of the time from 1923 to 1947, and the force behind the project when it began in 1928. Concourse A, the original building from 1929, was still in use when the airport closed. The airport was created by Ira Boyd Humphreys in 1919.

The March 1939 Official Aviation Guide shows nine weekday departures: seven United and two Continental. The April 1957 shows 38 United, 12 Continental, seven Braniff, seven Frontier, seven Western, five TWA and one Central. The first jets were Continental 707s in July or August 1959.

Runway 17/35 and a new terminal building opened in 1964. Concourse D was built in 1972. After deregulation three airlines had hubs at Stapleton: (Frontier Airlines, Continental Airlines, and United Airlines). To combat congestion runway 18/36 was added in the 1980s and the terminal was again expanded with the $250 million (or $58 million according to the New York Times^[1]) 24 gate Concourse E opening in 1988, despite Denver's replacement airport already under construction.^[2][3][4] When it closed in 1995 Stapleton had six runways (2 sets of 3 parallel runways) and five terminal concourses.

1938, 1956 and 1984 airport diagrams

In the early 1980s Stapleton was a hub for four airlines—United, Continental, Frontier and Western—making it one of the most competitive markets in the United States. Southwest Airlines and People Express tried low-cost service to Denver in the mid-1980s, but Southwest withdrew and People Express was acquired by Continental.^[5]

In September 1982 the first revenue flight of the Boeing 767 arrived at Stapleton from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago.

During the energy boom of the early 1980s, several skyscrapers were built in downtown Denver, including Republic Plaza (Denver's tallest at 714′). Due to Stapleton's location 3 miles (4.8 km) east of downtown, the Federal Aviation Administration imposed a building height restriction of 700'-715' (depending on where the building was). This allowed an unimpeded glide slope for runways (8L/26R) and (8R/26L). The height restriction was lifted in 1995, well after the city's skyscrapers had been erected.

Stapleton Airport was the site for Ted Fujita's studies of microbursts.

Continental Airlines closed its Stapleton pilot and flight attendant bases in October 1994, reducing operations and making United Airlines the airport's largest carrier.^[6] On February 25, 1995, George Hosford, Air Traffic Controller, cleared the last plane (Continental Flight 34, to London Gatwick) to depart from Stapleton International Airport. This would also mark the end of Continental Airlines' use of Denver as its hub.

Decommissioning

By the 1980s, plans were under way to replace Stapleton with a new airport. Stapleton was plagued with a number of problems, including:

• inadequate separation between runways, leading to extremely long waits in bad weather
• little or no room for other airlines that proposed/wanted to use Stapleton for new destinations (an example of this was Southwest Airlines)
• a lawsuit over aircraft noise, brought by residents of the nearby Park Hill community
• legal threats by Adams County, Colorado, to block a runway extension into Rocky Mountain Arsenal lands

The Colorado General Assembly brokered a deal in 1985 to annex a plot of land in Adams County into the city of Denver, and use that land to build a new airport. Adams County voters approved the plan in 1988, and Denver voters approved the plan in a 1989 referendum.

After weeks of delays, a Continental Airlines flight, with a destination of London Gatwick, was the last flight to depart Stapleton. The airport was then shut down. A convoy of vehicles of many kinds (rental cars, baggage carts, fuel trucks, etc.) traveled to the new Denver International Airport (DEN), which officially opened for all operations the following morning.^[7]

The runways at Stapleton were then marked with large yellow "X"s, which indicated it was no longer legal or safe for any aircraft to land there. The IATA and ICAO airport codes of DEN and KDEN were then transferred to the new DIA, to coincide with the same changes in airline and ATC computers, to ensure that flights to Denver would land at the new DIA.^[8]

Originally Denver sought tenants for Stapleton's terminal and concourses, but these buildings proved ill-suited for alternative uses. A July 1997 hail storm punched roughly 4,000 holes in the roofs of the old terminal and concourses, causing severe water damage, which compelled the city to tear them down. However, the airport's 12-story control tower will be retained as a monument to the airport's history and is likely to have an added observation deck for tourists.^[1]

All of Stapleton's airport infrastructure has been removed, except for the former control tower. The final parking structure was torn down to make room for the "Central Park West" section of the housing development in May 2011.

Facilities

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

Control tower at Denver's Stapleton International Airport photographed from top level of close-in parking structure, 1995.

At the time of its decommissioning, the airport had the following runways:

• 17R/35L (11,500 ft)
• 17L/35R (12,000 ft)
• 8L/26R (8,599 ft)
• 8R/26L (10,004 ft)
• 7/25 (4,871 ft)
• 18/36 (7,750 ft)

The terminal had five concourses:

• Concourse A – Commuter flights, Mesa Air Group, United Airlines
• Concourse B – United Airlines
• Concourse C – Continental Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Mexicana Airlines
• Concourse D – Continental Express, Delta Air Lines, MarkAir, Pan American World Airways, Trans World Airlines
• Concourse E – America West Airlines, American Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Sun Country, USAir

Continental Airlines was once headquartered in Stapleton, moving there in October 1937.^[9] Airline president Robert F. Six arranged to have the headquarters moved to Denver from El Paso, Texas because he believed that the airline should have its headquarters in a large city with a potential base of customers.^[10] At a 1962 press conference in the office of Mayor of Los Angeles Sam Yorty, Continental Airlines announced that it planned to move its headquarters to Los Angeles in July 1963.^[11]

Redevelopment

While Denver International was being constructed, planners began to consider how the Stapleton site would be redeveloped. A private group of Denver civic leaders, the Stapleton Development Foundation, convened in 1990 and produced a master plan for the site in 1995, emphasizing a pedestrian-oriented design rather than the automobile-oriented designs found in many other planned developments.

Accidents and incidents

Several major air crashes involved Stapleton as the origin or destination airport, with four evidently occurring at Stapleton.

At Stapleton

• On July 11, 1961, United Airlines Flight 859, a DC-8-12 tail number N8040U, was destroyed after landing. Asymmetric thrust on engines 1 & 2 (left wing) forced a loss of control on the runway. The aircraft struck a maintenance vehicle, killing the driver. In the ensuing disaster, 17 of the DC-8's 122 occupants died.
• On August 7, 1975, Continental Airlines Flight 426 crashed due to windshear after taking off and climbing to 100 feet (30 m) on runway 35L. Nobody was killed in the accident.
• On November 16, 1976, a Texas International DC-9-10 aircraft stalled after takeoff at Stapleton and crashed. The 81 passengers and 5 crewmembers suffered a total of 14 injured, but there were no deaths.
• On November 15, 1987, Continental Airlines Flight 1713, a DC-9-14 jetliner bound for Boise, Idaho, crashed on takeoff at Stapleton during a snowstorm. The probable cause of the crash was the failure of the flight crew to have the aircraft de-iced prior to take-off and the over-rotation of the aircraft on take-off. Twenty-eight of the plane's 82 occupants were killed.

Flights with Stapleton as the origin or destination airport

• On October 6, 1955, United Airlines Flight 409, a Douglas DC-4 propliner, was a scheduled flight departing from Denver, Colorado to Salt Lake City, Utah. The aircraft crashed into Medicine Bow Peak, near Centennial, Wyoming, killing all 66 people on board (63 passengers, 3 crew members.) The victims included five female members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and military personnel. At the time, this was the deadliest airline crash in U.S. commercial aviation history.
• On November 1, 1955, United Airlines Flight 629, a Douglas DC-6B airliner was blown up over nearby Longmont while en route to Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington from Stapleton, killing all 44 persons aboard. Jack Gilbert Graham was found to have planted a dynamite bomb in a suitcase that was loaded onto the plane, to murder his mother in revenge for the way she treated him as a child. He was executed one year and two months after the bombing.
• On January 18, 1969, United Airlines Flight 266, which departed from Los Angeles International Airport to Stapleton, crashed into the Pacific Ocean about 12 miles from the airport after suffering complete electrical failure. All 38 people aboard the Boeing 727 were killed upon impact.
• On December 28, 1978, United Airlines Flight 173, which departed from Stapleton, ran out of fuel while circling Portland International Airport as the crew investigated landing gear problems. The DC-8-61 jetliner's fuel supply was exhausted after the crew decided to "go-around" one more time prior to landing. The plane subsequently crashed in a wooded residential neighborhood southeast of the Portland airport. Ten of the plane's 189 occupants were killed.
• On July 19, 1989, United Airlines Flight 232, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 en route from Stapleton to O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, crash-landed at the Sioux City, Iowa, airport after a fan disk exploded in engine 2, severing all of the plane's hydraulic systems. 112 of the plane's 296 occupants died.
• On March 3, 1991, United Airlines Flight 585 was on final approach to Colorado Springs Municipal Airport from Stapleton when the Boeing 737-200's rudder jammed, causing the plane to roll right and dive into the ground. All 20 passengers and 5 crew were killed.

References

5. "Weakening of airlines' "hub and spoke" model could imperil Denver airport". Denver Post. 17 August 2004. Retrieved 10 December 2013.
6. Yates, Ronald (8 July 1994). "Continental To Shutter Pilot, Attendant Bases In Denver". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 10 December 2013.
8. Freeman, Stapleton International Airport
9. Kasel, Carol. "CONTINENTAL AIRLINES: THE DENVER YEARS." Rocky Mountain News. October 30, 1994. Retrieved January 24, 2010.
10. "The Company." Continental Airlines Magazine. July 2009. Retrieved February 8, 2010.
11. "Continental Airlines to Move Its Main Offices Here From Denver." Los Angeles Times. August 16, 1962. B11. Retrieved January 24, 2010.

External links

 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Air Force Historical Research Agency.

• Airport history
• Stapleton Airport Photographs
• Airport diagrams: 1938, 1956, and 1959