Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport is an international airport under Class B airspace in the City of Kenner, Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, United States. It is owned by the City of New Orleans and is west of downtown New Orleans. A small portion of Runway 11/29 is in unincorporated St. Charles Parish. Armstrong International is the primary commercial airport for the New Orleans metropolitan area and southeast Louisiana. Nonstop service to some sixty destinations is provided, including flights to Europe, Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean.
MSY covers 1,500 acres (607 ha) of land and contains two runways and two helipads. At an average of above sea level, MSY is the third lowest-lying international airport in the world, behind only Amsterdam Airport Schiphol in the Netherlands, which is below sea level, and Atyrau International Airport in Kazakhstan, which lies 72 feet (22 m) below sea level.
Plans for a new airport began in 1940, as evidence mounted that the older Shushan Airport (New Orleans Lakefront Airport) was too small.
The airport was originally named Moisant Field after daredevil aviator John Moisant, who died in 1910 in an airplane crash on agricultural land where the airport is now located. Its IATA code MSY was derived from Moisant Stock Yards, as Lakefront Airport retained the code NEW. In World War II the land became a government air base. It returned to civil control after the war and commercial service commenced in May 1946. In September 1947, the airport was shut down as it was submerged under two feet of water in the wake of the 1947 Fort Lauderdale Hurricane's impact.
When commercial service began at Moisant Field in 1946, the terminal occupied a large, makeshift hangar-like building. A new terminal complex debuted in 1959 towards the end of Mayor DeLesseps "Chep" Morrison's administration. This structure, greatly expanded in the 1970s and the recipient of two rebuilt concourses in the 1990s and 2000s, comprised the passenger terminal until its replacement with the new North Terminal in November 2019. The former terminal contained two sections, East and West, connected by a central ticketing alley and baggage claim. Four concourses, A, B, C and D, were attached to the terminal, which eventually grew to a total of 47 gates. The vaulted arrivals lounge at the head of Concourse C and the adjacent, western half of the ticketing alley are the remaining portions of the airport's 1959 terminal complex.
Retired United States Air Force Major General Junius Wallace Jones served as airport director in the 1950s. During his term, a period of rapid change in civil aviation, the airport received many improvements. By the time the airport's 1959 terminal building opened, the name Moisant International Airport was being used for the New Orleans facility. In 1961, the name was changed to New Orleans International Airport. The airport's mid-1970s expansion included a lengthened main terminal ticketing area, an airport access road linking the terminal to Interstate 10, and the construction of Concourses A and B. The two original 1959 concourses were renamed Concourse C and Concourse D, with the latter receiving a four-gate addition at its terminus, designed to accommodate widebody aircraft.
In July 1978, National Airlines began flights to Amsterdam with continuing same-plane service to Frankfurt utilizing widebody McDonnell Douglas DC-10s. This was New Orleans' first nonstop transatlantic flight. Less than a month later, National added a stop in Tampa due to low demand. In May 1981, British Airways inaugurated a flight from London's Gatwick Airport to Mexico City that stopped in New Orleans. It flew a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar on the route. The airline, then government-owned, discontinued the service in October 1982 because of its deepening financial problems.
Northeastern International Airways operated a small hub at MSY in the spring of 1984. Another airline that attempted to operate a hub at MSY was short-lived Pride Air which was based in New Orleans and was operating nonstop or direct Boeing 727 service from the airport to sixteen destinations, including cities in California, Florida, and the western U.S., in the summer of 1985.
In July 2001, to honor the 100th anniversary of Louis Armstrong's birth (August 4, 1901), the airport's name became Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.
MSY reopened to commercial flights on September 13, 2005, after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina the previous month, with four flights operated by Delta Air Lines to Atlanta and a Northwest Airlines flight to Memphis. Slowly, service from other carriers began to resume. All international service into MSY was suspended while the FIS facility was closed post-Katrina. This facility was reopened in time to accommodate chartered flights arriving from London, Manchester, Bournemouth, and Nottingham (UK) carrying tourists arriving for the 2006 Mardi Gras and set to depart from the Port of New Orleans aboard a cruise liner.
MSY served 9,785,394 passengers in 2014, exceeding for the first time in the post-Katrina era the total passenger count of 9,733,179 achieved in 2004, the last full calendar year prior to Katrina's landfall in August 2005. A new record passenger count was set by the airport in 2015. 10,673,301 passengers were served, eclipsing the earlier record of 9.9 million passengers, set in 2000. In 2019 the airport served 13.1 million passengers.
In December 2015, the New Orleans Aviation Board, along with New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and the City Council, approved a plan to build a new $598 million terminal building on the north side of the airport property with two concourses and 30 gates. Designed by Argentine-American architect Cesar Pelli, construction on the new main terminal began in January 2016. During the construction, the scope of the project was expanded so the terminal would feature 35 gates. In March 2017, British Airways resumed flying to MSY, commencing nonstop service to London's Heathrow Airport using Boeing 787 widebody aircraft.
The new terminal opened in November 2019 at a cost of $1.3 billion. The former terminal, located on the south side of the airfield, is no longer in regular commercial use.
MSY has a single operational terminal with three concourses labeled A, B, and C. There are a total of 35 gates. Departures and Ticketing are on Level 3, TSA Security Screening is on Level 2, and Arrivals and Baggage Claim are on Level 1. International flights are processed in Concourse A, which contains the airport's customs facilities.
The terminal is served by Interstate 10. Bus service between the airport and downtown New Orleans is provided by New Orleans Regional Transit Authority Airport Express Route 202 and Jefferson Parish Transit route E-1. Airport Shuttle has services to most hotels and hostels in the Central Business District of New Orleans. The rental car facility is on the south side of the airfield next to the former terminal.