Wichita Mid-Continent Airport History: #4

The terminal had been remodeled a number of times to accommodate passenger needs and convenience. In 1968, a new baggage claim and rental car counter was built. In 1969, construction commenced on a third runway, one left, one nine right. On June 11, 1973, the airport's name was changed to Wichita Mid-Continent Airport. In 1976, two concourses with ten gates were added. In 1980, a new airport access road, Mid-Continent Drive, was built. In 1985, the ticketing wing was expanded, two gates were added, and the baggage carousel was replaced. The last major renovation and expansion occurred in 1989. It was during the construction process, the contractor, in order for him to install this skylight, he had to protect the public that was walking right underneath the area that he was going to be working. So he had to protect the public. The contractor built, I'm going to say, two tunnels. One for the people coming from the ticket counters that had to go to their airplanes, and then another tunnel was people coming from the airplanes that had to go to baggage claim. And the tunnels weren't very wide, probably six foot at best. They were going to be there for a while because this was not an overnight installation of that skylight. Over 61 years, the old terminal was maintained by a dedicated airport staff, but it had outlived its time. The security checkpoint was a bottleneck. The ticketing wing was crowded, the roof leaked, and the air conditioning could not keep up. Went down to the boiler room where this big Worthington chiller was sitting there, and all of a sudden it started glowing red, which was not a good sign, and it basically burned up right there. So that put us down to one chiller for the terminal building, and it wasn't very big. And within a matter of about a few days, it sprung a leak internal and flooded the internal of the chiller with water. So here it was in July, 100 to 103 degrees, and we had no air conditioning in the terminal building.