Seattle-Tacoma International Airport

The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is the main international airport servicing the city of Seattle and the entire state of Washington in the American northwest. The technical location of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is the city of SeaTac - that's right, a combination of the words "Seattle" and "Tacoma." As you might have guessed, SeaTac gets its name because it is a suburb of both cities, and thus a very convenient location for the hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of Seattle as well as the tens of thousands of tourists who visit this beautiful state every year.

The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is an international gateway for Northwest Airlines; in other words, Northwest brings its passengers from across the Pacific into Seattle upon returning to the states. The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is also a hub for Alaska Airlines and its regional subsidiary, Horizon Air. Alaska Airlines, in fact, has its headquarters located in close proximity to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport for easy access to its facilities and high airliner capacity.

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The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is an extremely busy airport, serving millions of passengers and thousands of planes every single year. In 2006, for example, the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport served almost thirty million passengers, which makes it the seventeenth busiest airport in the entire United States - quite a feat in such a populous and technological nation.

The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport gets a substantially increased portion of traffic through its runways and gates simply because of its high priority as a coastal airport and hub or gateway for successful airlines. Its status as hub for Alaska Airlines as well as that airline's headquarter proximity means it gets prime business from Alaska Airlines, moving thousands of Alaska Airlines passengers every single year in the company's air taxi jets.

Don't forget also that the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is an international gateway: Northwest Airlines, bringing its airliners back across the Pacific, uses the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport as a gateway to welcome citizens back and tourists into this great country of ours. Northwest has considered moving to nearby Boeing field, but the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport's larger size and status in the free market economy made management at Northwest settle on the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport as their gateway of choice.

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There are currently two open runways at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, both running in the same direction - 16L/34R, to be exact. The longer of these two is surfaced with asphalt and is 3627 meters long - long enough by far to land even the largest and most awkward of passenger jumbo jets and cargo airliners. The second runway, shortly to the west of the long runway, is topped with concrete instead of asphalt, and is 2873 meters long. While this may seem short when compared to the more than two miles of straight asphalt in the long runway, 2873 meters is still long enough by far to land almost any plane now moving through the polluted air of our modern industrial world.

Plans are now in the works with airport management, local government officials, and investors and shareholders in the airport to build another runway. Plans, in fact, might be a bit of an understatement - the runway is already well into construction. It will run parallel to the two current runways, slightly to the west of both, and will also be topped in concrete. When completed, this new runway will be about 2590 meters long - again, as we've stated earlier, plenty long enough to all but the most massive modern aircraft able to land easily on the runway with no difficulty whatsoever. That runway, if all goes as planned, should be finished and ready for use by sometime around the middle of the year 2008.

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As we've already stated, the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is an extremely busy one - the 17th busiest, in fact, with facilities serving almost thirty million passengers every single year. It's ranking in overall standing is slightly behind in non passenger related topics - it is only 28th, for example, in total aircraft operations, and 19th in total cargo volume brought in through the airport.

Currently, the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is served by airlines from around the world, including Northwest - which, as we've already discussed, uses the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport as its international gate way - and Alaska Airlines, which uses it as a base and hub. A few of the other American airlines that offer service into the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport include Continental Airlines, Southwest, United Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines.

The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport also supports quite a wide range of international airlines offering flights across the Pacific to Japan, the Asian continent, New Zealand and Australia. These airlines are from all around the world, not just Australia and Asia, as you can see: a few of them are Lufthansa, British Airways, Air France, China Airlines, Scandinavian Airlines, and Vladivostok Air. With it's massive capacity for passenger movement, the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is a popular destination for travelers as well as a popular layover spot for those who are simply using the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport as a jumping off point to somewhere else.

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Passengers at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport are treated quite well, and rarely regret their layovers or other duties at the airport. Airport officials are friendly and helpful, able to help you around the premises if you can't find where you need to go, so don't hesitate to ask one if you ever find yourself in any airport - not just this one - with no idea where you are or how to get to where you need to be. A few questions can quickly set you in the right direction.

Other amenities the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport offers to its passengers is a relatively extensive array of dining establishments, coffee bars, and other small shops and duty free buying locations for flyers from around the country and around the world to come and spend their hard earned money. The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport also offers free wifi access from anywhere in the airport, for those travelers stranded here with a laptop. That makes browsing the Internet easy and hassle free even when you're just sitting and waiting for your luggage to show up.

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If you're considering flying into or out of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, it might be a good idea for you to know how to get to it or to get from it to the nearest hotel or wherever it actually is that you intend to stay during the duration of your stay in Washington state. In that case, you're in luck - the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is accessed easily by local roads and metro services. The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is in fact located on the intersections of Washington State Route 518, Washington State Route 99 and Washington State 509, all about one and a half miles from Interstate 5.

The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport offers several transportation related services to its customers, making it very easy for solitary passengers deplaning there to get where they need to go with a minimum of fuss and hassle. For starters, the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport offers a wide range of rental car options at assorted rental car services scattered around the airport grounds - make sure when deplaning in the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport that you keep an eye open for the appropriate signs if you'd prefer to have access to your own vehicle during your stay in Washington.

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There are also mass transit options available from the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, including a well-equipped bus line that uses the standard roads in from Seattle and Tacoma. Specifically, the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport uses King County's Metro Transit busses and the Sound Transit regional express busses to get its passengers where they need to be. All of these options - including, of course, taxis - are available near the end of the baggage claim at door 00.

These are currently the only mass transit options available, but don't lose hope just yet - the Sound Transit Central Link is planning on opening a light rail line into the airport to provide easy, cheap transportation for its passengers hopefully starting as early as December of 2009. When that arrives, passengers deplaning at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport will be able to take a light, fast train directly into town, thus bypassing all of the problems caused by traffic and driving in Seattle or Tacoma.

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The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport was first constructed in 1944 as a civilian airport, unlike so many other airports that got their starts as military bases during the Second World War. The bill was originally footed by the Port of Seattle, which received one million dollars from the Civil Aeronautics Administration to build an airport. That, with another $100,000 from the city of Tacoma, formed the basis; the seed from which the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport has now sprung into full blossom. After the Second World War ended, civilian air flight began, with the first regularly scheduled flights beginning to trickle into the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in 1947.

Two years after that, the first plane arrived from Tokyo and the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport received the moniker "international" as part of its official title. Over the years, runways were lengthened to improve airport capacity and allow ever bigger jets to land at the airport, which fielded longer and longer range flights until, in 1966, SAS gave the airport its first non stop commercial flight from Seattle to Europe.

The airport has been sued several times for noise and disturbance to its nearby neighbors, but that's hardly a new problem, especially for airports. Jets make a lot of noise when they take off and land, and are at the present a necessary part of any serious long range travel.

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One rather more unusual trait for which the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is an incident on December 9, 2006, when a controversy arose about the airport's display of Christmas trees. While the Port of Seattle referred to said trees as "holiday trees" in all of its official documents, Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky thought more needed to be done and offered to install a chanukkiyah in addition to the `holiday' trees. Talks were unproductive and the rabbi's lawyer took the airport to court. Trees were taken down and the media was alerted; after substantial negative public opinion, the rabbi dropped the case and the trees were brought back. If you plan to visit Seattle soon, you might

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