Description & Facts: Hawaii's main air terminal - now known as Honolulu Internationa Airport - celebrated its 80th birthday on March 21, 2007. During its evolution, it has gone through many changes, from a seaplane port to a major international airport and is seeking to improve its facilities with a major contruction plan.

Air links from the US mainland and other countries to the islands of Hawaii were not really established until the late 1930s when aircraft had the range to cross the Pacific. In 1939, Pan American's Boeing 314 flying boats - known as Clippers by the carrier - linked Hawaii with San Francisco, California and the Far East. However, aviation in Hawaii had begun bofore this and John Rodgers Airport was opened on March 21, 1927. Constructed a few miles from fowntown Honolulu on the souther coast of the island of Oahu, it wsa originally named after Commander John Rodgers, a Pearl Harbor-based US Navy aviator, who pioneered the Navy's first flight from the US west coast to Hawaii. In 1929, Inter-Island Airways, the predecessor to Hawaiian Airlines, linked the islands via Sikorsky-built seaplanes from the nearby Keehi Lahoon Seaplane Harbor.

Renamed Hawaiian Airlines in 1941, it transitioned to the Douglas DC-3, as airports were developed on the neighboring Islands.

Following the Hapanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, a decision was made to increase the size of the airfield and to link it to the nearby Hickam Army Air Field (now a USAF base) and share runways and taxiways. The site included four runways - two parallel strips Runways 04L/22R and 04R/22L, Runways 14/32 (closed in 1957, and now taxiway D), and Runway 08/26. A terminal was built to the east, on the Lagoon Drive side of the airfield, and had 'Aloha' emlazoned across the side of the control tower.

in 1947, the Territorial Legislature of Hawaii officially changed the airport0s name to Honolulu Airport (HNL), which also included the Keehi Lagoon Seaplane Harbor. The airport became a stopping-off point for some of he great propliners of the era - the Douglas DC-6 and DC-7, Lockheed Constellation, and Boeing 377 'Stratocruiser'. Both local inter-island carriers, Hawaiian and Trans-Pacific Airlines, used a variety of propliners including the Vickers Viscount. In 1951, the airport's name was again changed to Honolulu International Airport.