Omaha Airport-Eppley Airfield

Eppley Airfield is a medium hub airport three miles northeast of downtown Omaha, Nebraska, in Douglas County, Nebraska, United States. It is the largest airport in Nebraska, serving ten times more passengers than all other Nebraska airports combined.The airport occupies and handles about 120 airline flights per day to and from 29 daily and 3 seasonal non-stop destinations. Eppley served 4.35 million passengers in 2016 (including both enplaned and deplaned passengers).HistoryEppley Airfield began as an extension of Levi Carter Park near East Omaha in 1925. That year, the City of Omaha acquired 200 acres of cleared land on the east side of Carter Lake. Almost immediately, planes started landing and taking off there. A lawsuit was launched against the City in 1927 when a group wanted to build a hangar there. The lawsuit failed and the land was called both the Omaha Municipal Airport and the American Legion Airport.The April 1957 Official Airline Guide shows 42 scheduled airline departures per day, with 23 by United Airlines and 19 by Braniff Airlines. The airport is named for Eugene C. Eppley, the Eppley Hotels magnate of Omaha, from whose estate $1.0 million was used to convert the then Omaha Municipal Airport into a jetport in 1959-60. This was matched by the federal government and improvements were made to handle jets at the airport, and the first jets landed were United Airlines B720s in August 1960.