Austin-Bergstrom International Airport Turns 20

AUSTIN, TX — Oh, how time flies: The Austin-Bergstrom Internation Airport is turning 20 this week after having opened on May 23, 1999.

Airport officials have scheduled a celebration of that milestone across from the Barbara Jordan Terminal on Thursday, May 23. To celebrate the airport's second decade of operation, the City of Austin Aviation Department and several of the airport’s businesses and concessions will hold a parade through the terminal at 11 a.m. on May 23. Gifts and treats will be handed out to travelers at stops throughout the parade, with birthday cake served near Gate 18.

Austin-Bergstrom was constructed within the footprint of Bergstrom Air Force Base and replaced the Robert Mueller Municipal Airport that had served Austin passengers for more than 60 years. And, no, the man honored with the former incarnation of the airport isn't the special counsel who looked into Russian interference in the 2016 election, but a former Austin councilman who died in 1927 shortly after being elected to office.

The late councilman for whom the first airport was named is said to have told colleagues he felt ill during a late-night budget session, only to be asked to stay given his needed expertise. He remained working well into the night, later succumbing to illness. "It was helping his city which has probably hastened his death," the Austin American-Statesman reported at the time. "For on that night, according to members of the city council, he told them he was ill about 10 o'clock, and they asked him to stay a little while longer for the budget was almost planned and they needed his guidance. He remained, and every little while he would remark he was sick, but finally, with plans nearly completed, he went home at 11:30 o'clock."

The Austin-Bergstrom International Airport that replaced the old one was designed to meet the increasing air service needs of Central Texas travelers, officials said, with more than 6.6 million passengers traveling to 29 nonstop destinations across the United States in its first year of operation. By 2018, more than 15.8 million passengers traveled through Austin-Bergstrom to more than 70 destinations across North America and Europe.