Sacramento International Airport is a public airport 10 miles (16 km) northwest of downtown Sacramento, in Sacramento County, California. It is run by Sacramento County. Southwest Airlines currently accounts for half the airline passengers. In 2012 the airport handled 8,910,570 passengers, a decrease from 8,929,289 passengers in 2011.
SACRAMENTO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT HISTORY
Due to the vast housing growth around Sacramento Executive Airport, the City of Sacramento Planning Department and the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors commissioned a study to move large commercial air operations to a less populated area.
Sacramento International Airport opened October 21, 1967 as Sacramento Metropolitan Airport. Until then the airlines used what is now Sacramento Executive Airport, then called Sacramento Municipal Airport (SAC).
In 1957 the proposed construction of Sacramento Metropolitan Airport and purchase of nearly 6,000 acres north of downtown Sacramento was considered extravagant, risky, poorly located and based on unrealistic passenger expectations. The skeptics were wrong. The original estimate of 750,000 annual passengers soon proved to be conservative as the airport surpassed one million passengers during its first year. Sacramento Metropolitan Airport was the first airport west of the Mississippi built from the ground up for public use.
SACRAMENTO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT LOCATION
SACRAMENTO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT FACTS
ICAO/IATA: KSMF/SMF
Lat: 38°41′44″N
Long: 121°35′27″W
Elevation: 27 ft.
Runway length available: 16R/34L 8600×150 ft. :: 16L/34R 8601×150 ft.
