Wichita Mid-Continent Airport History: #6

There are many fond memories. Wichita hosted the Miss USA Beauty Pageant in 1990 and the Miss Teen USA Beauty Pageant in 1995. Celebrating new air service is always a major event. You were Minnie Mouse and I think I was Snow White. It was a lot of fun especially when the plane was leaving and we all The Blues Brothers came to celebrate the start of Vanguard service. Elvis along with some Vegas showgirls arrived to celebrate Allegiant service to Las Vegas. Bob Dole came to celebrate Air Tran Airways start of service. A Wall Street reporter was also here because of Wichita's nationwide publicity of its Fairfares campaign that lured Air Tran to Wichita. Southwest arrived unexpectedly during another airline inaugural. At one point we had service between Dallas and Wichita on some of the carriers who supported the major airlines so they were the smaller carriers and one of them had just come to town to replace actually some of the larger planes and we were having the inaugural event and we were having it in the gate area where you could see out onto the landing field and what just as we finished up the festivities a Southwest Airlines jet began to land and everyone focused all their attention on that occurrence because Southwest of course did not serve the airport at that time and so everyone from that airline turned and looked at me and I said and it turned out it was an emergency the the airplane was just going to the nearest place to land but it caused quite a stir. After many years of courting Southwest Airlines the big day finally came. On June 2nd 2013 the community celebrated when Southwest finally began service in Wichita. We've hosted fashion shoots, snowball express flights, K-State tailgate parties for bowl game charters and shocker rallies in the gate for several tournament charters. The old terminal was a challenge when we hosted the Kansas honor flights because we didn't have room for the large crowds that came out but we made do. Ever think of the airport as a romantic venue? While we've seen lots of hugs and kisses we've even hosted a wedding. And the reason we did airport we thought airport number one was because we had a lot of friends here at the airport. I'm from a different state I'm from Ohio my husband is from Arkansas so he has no family here I have no family here except for my kids. A lot of people wanted to be at the wedding they couldn't be because they had to work so we said okay have it at the airport. It was the day I always remember first wedding at the airport.