20th century in the background in September 2009 Planning for a new airport on to serve the
Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area began in 1944, just prior to the end of
World War II, when the Baltimore Aviation Commission announced its decision that the best location to build a new airport would be on a tract of land near
Linthicum Heights, Maryland. The cost of building the airport was estimated at $9 million. Much of the land was purchased from Friendship Methodist Church in 1946, and ground was broken on May 2, 1947. Friendship Methodist Church held its last service on Easter Sunday in 1948. Friendship Methodist Church was razed to make room for the new airport. and 170 bodies buried in a cemetery were moved.
Baltimore–Fort Meade Road was moved to the west to make way for the airport's construction.
Friendship International Airport was dedicated on June 24, 1950, by President
Harry S. Truman. Truman arrived in a
Douglas DC-6, then the official presidential airplane, from nearby
Washington National Airport. Accompanying Truman were the
Governor William Preston Lane Jr. and
Baltimore Mayor Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., who was taking his first aircraft flight. The cost to construct the airport totaled $15 million. Seven minutes later, the same plane was also the first flight to depart from the airport. By 1963, Friendship Int'l Airport was equipped with a 9,450 foot (2,880 m) runway, which could handle any commercial jet aircraft at that time. In 1972, the
Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) purchased Friendship International Airport from the City of Baltimore for $36million. Under MDOT, the
Maryland State Aviation Administration took over airfield operations, and the airport grew from three employees to more than 200. Plans to upgrade, improve, and modernize all Maryland airport facilities were announced almost immediately by
Harry Hughes, then Maryland Secretary of Transportation and later
Governor of Maryland. On November 16, 1973, in an effort to attract passengers from the
Washington metropolitan area, particularly
Montgomery and
Prince George's counties in suburban Maryland, the airport was renamed
Baltimore/Washington International Airport. The BWI code had previously been used by an airport in Bewani,
Papua New Guinea. In 1974, the first phase of the airport's modernization was completed at a cost of $30million. Upgrades included improved instrument landing capabilities and runway systems, and construction of three new air cargo terminals, expanding the airport's freight capacity to . The renovations more than doubled the size of BWI's terminal to , and the number of gates increased from 20 to 27. The total cost was $70million. To continue the work, the BWI Development Council was established to support initiatives for airport development. In 1980, the
BWI Rail Station opened, providing a connection for passengers on the
Northeast Corridor through
Amtrak. BWI was the first airport in the U.S. with a dedicated intercity rail station. The station provided rail transit access to Washington, D.C., something that Dulles International Airport did not achieve until late 2022. BWI added a new international terminal (Concourse E), designed by STV Group and William Nicholas Bodouva & Associates, in 1997. Dulles, though, continues to hold the lion's share of the region's international flights. BWI has not attracted as many long-haul international carriers. The airport's first scheduled commercial transatlantic nonstop flights were
Icelandic Air flights to
Luxembourg Airport, which began November 3, 1978, but they ended in 1980 because of equipment shortages.
World Airways began operating nonstop flights to
London Gatwick Airport on May 30, 1981. Icelandic, now renamed Icelandair, restarted nonstop flights between BWI and Luxembourg in 1982.
British Airways began nonstop flights between BWI and
London Heathrow Airport in 1984.
Aer Lingus,
Air Jamaica,
Air Aruba,
Air Canada,
Air Greenland,
Condor,
El Al,
KLM,
Ladeco, and
Mexicana all previously flew to BWI. Over the first half of the 1990s, runway 15L/33R was extended from to its current length of , allowing it to be used by small passenger jets like the
Boeing 737. Beginning in the 1980s and for much of the 1990s, BWI was a hub for
Piedmont Airlines and successor
US Airways, but that airline's financial problems in the wake of the
dot-com bust, the
September 11 attacks, and low fare competition forced it to cut back. The airport has been a haven for
low-cost flights in the Baltimore/Washington Metropolitan Area since
Southwest Airlines' arrival in September 1993 and subsequent expansion in the early 2000s. Southwest is the airport's largest carrier, accounting for 56.12% of the airport's passengers in 2011. Southwest Airlines currently serves on average 245 daily departures to the U.S.,
Mexico, and the
Caribbean.
21st century In January 2000, the BWI
USO opened, the largest in the world at that time.
Space-A flights operated by the
U.S. Air Force's Air Mobility Command continue to have a significant presence at BWI. Flights from
Ramstein Air Base and
Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst occur frequently. The facility serves 99 percent of military personnel traveling to and from duty stations in Europe, Southwest Asia, and the United States. planes at Concourses A-B in February 2017 In July 2000,
Ghana Airways began service from BWI to
Accra. The airline operated the flight with McDonnell Douglas DC-10s and sought to serve the many people of West African origin residing in the region. Four years later, in July 2004, the
U.S. federal government prohibited Ghana Airways from flying to the U.S. According to officials, the company was operating on an expired license and had disobeyed orders to stop flying an unsafe plane. In 2005, to accommodate Southwest's extensive presence at the airport, Concourses A and B were expanded, renovated, and integrated with one another to house all of that airline's operations there for their major operating base. The new facility, designed by
URS Corporation, opened on May 22, 2005. On October 1 of that year, the airport was renamed
Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, to honor former
U.S. Supreme Court justice
Thurgood Marshall, a native of
Baltimore. In June 2006,
North American Airlines introduced a link to Accra via
Banjul,
The Gambia, marking the restoration of direct flights between Baltimore and
Africa. The carrier employed Boeing 767s on the route. Afterward, it made the Accra flight nonstop and added a route to Lagos. North American ended all scheduled service in May 2008. In 2008,
Health magazine named BWI the second-healthiest airport in the United States. In 2009 the airport had a six percent increase in air travelers due to the proliferation of discount flights. In a 2009 survey of airport service quality by Airports Council International, BWI was the world's top ranking airport in the 15-to-25-million-passenger category. BWI also ranked seventh, in medium-sized airports, based on customer satisfaction conducted by
J.D. Power and Associates. On August 5, 2014, the airport's little-used runway, 04–22, was permanently closed. It was long and used primarily when the main runways needed to be closed for repairs. The last operation on the runway was a
Southwest Airlines flight from
Chicago Midway Airport, which arrived at 4:18 AM. In 2015,
Norwegian Air Shuttle announced it would begin flights from the airport to
Guadeloupe and
Martinique. In an interview with
The Baltimore Sun, Norwegian Air Shuttle CEO Bjorn Kjos said, "Baltimore is high on the list for long-haul destinations", hinting at further expansion into Europe. In mid-2018, however, the airline ceased all flights out of Baltimore, attributing the cessation to heavy financial losses. In early 2016, a partnership between the airport and
Towson University's
WTMD radio station was announced, including a new concert series that takes place at the terminal's baggage claim on the lower level. Local bands included
Wye Oak and others. The new series followed the release event of
Animal Collective's new album
Painting With on November 25, 2015, where the new album was streamed throughout the airport. In late 2018, construction began on a $60 million, five-gate expansion of terminal A for
Southwest Airlines. The new expansion began operations in 2021. 2018 also marked a new annual record for passenger traffic at BWI Marshall Airport with over 27.1 million passengers. In 2021,
commuter airline Southern Airways Express ended its hub at BWI and switched its
East Coast hub to
Dulles International Airport. In addition, the airport's international growth continued with the addition of a twice-weekly flight by
Air Senegal to
Blaise Diagne International Airport in
Dakar, Senegal, via a stop in
Kennedy International Airport in
Queens, New York City. However, in January 2023, Air Senegal ceased the New York City to Baltimore portion of this route, dropping Baltimore back down to only two year-round transatlantic flights. In 2022,
Play began daily nonstop flights from Baltimore to
Reykjavík, Iceland, which was quickly followed a few weeks later by
Icelandair also resuming flights from BWI to Reykjavík. On January 26, 2023,
Copa Airlines announced they would start operating direct flights to
Panama City, making it the first
Central America-based airline to operate out of the airport. The flights began as scheduled in late June 2023. In August 2024,
Icelandair announced that they would be partnering with
Southwest Airlines to better connect their customers, and that the initial North American gateway between the airlines would be BWI. From 2024 to 2025, BWI lost service from six airlines:
Air Canada,
Allegiant Air,
Condor,
Contour,
JetBlue and
Play.
Renovations and expansion In October 2022, a proposed renovation and expansion to BWI Airport was announced. It has been described as the "largest capital project in the history of BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport". This project includes major upgrades to the airports' Baggage Handling System as well as a renovation and expansion to the airports' A/B Connector, which will provide passengers with a direct connection between concourses A and B. The project (according to airport management as well as
Clark Construction, the company hired for the project) is expected to "transform the customer experience by adding a direct connection between concourses, expanding airline hold rooms, creating new food and retail concession spaces, enhancing restrooms, and introducing a new, fully in-line baggage handling system for Southwest." The project was initially estimated to cost $425 million and was expected to be fully completed in summer 2026. On January 8, 2026, it was announced that the new A/B Connector had been completed and would open the following day (January 9) for passengers and flights. The opening came months ahead of its original schedule, initially expecting to open in summer 2026. The cost of the project was nearly $500 million. ==Facilities==