T. F. Green Airport was dedicated on September 27, 1931, as Hillsgrove State Airport, drawing what was at that time the largest crowd to attend a public function in the country. In 1938, the airport was renamed in honor of Green, who had just been elected to the Senate two years earlier. At the time it had three concrete runways. The
Army Air Force took control from 1942 to 1945, using it for flight training. in April 1951 runway 5 was and 5R/23L was under construction. A few years later 5R/23L was , which it remained until extended to around 1967. The April 1957 OAG shows 26 weekday departures: 11
Eastern, 10
American, four
United, and one
National. Nonstops did not reach beyond Boston and Newark until 1959 when Eastern started a DC-7B nonstop to Washington, which was the longest until United started Cleveland in 1968 and Chicago in 1970 and Eastern started Miami in 1969 and Atlanta in 1970. The first jets were Mohawk BAC-111s in 1966. President
Richard Nixon made a campaign stop at the airport on the night of Friday, November 3, 1972. A crowd of 10,000 watched as Nixon, standing on the steps of
Air Force One, urged voters to support Republican candidates
Herbert F. DeSimone for Governor and
John Chafee for U.S. Senator. (Both lost, though Chafee later won the office in 1976.) Air Force One again touched down at T. F. Green on August 30, 1975, this time carrying President
Gerald Ford, en route to a fundraiser in Newport. He was greeted by a crowd of about 1,500 supporters, as well as local politicians including Governor
Philip W. Noel, Senator
John O. Pastore, and Providence Mayor
Buddy Cianci.
From the 1960s To enhance itself as the lone airport for a metro area of over 1.6 million people, a new terminal was built on Post Road in 1964, replacing the old 1933 terminal along Airport Road. In 1996 this terminal was replaced, expanding to 18 gates, and adding a lower arrival level and an upper departure level. In 1997 four gates were added. Airlines added flights to T. F. Green Airport, including
Air Canada,
Southwest,
SATA International (which operated flights to the
Azores using an A310-300), and
Spirit Airlines. After the
September 11 attacks in 2001, T. F. Green Airport, like most airports in the United States, faced a temporary decrease in passengers and fewer flights from
American Airlines (which once flew to
Chicago O'Hare and
Dallas/Fort Worth Airport), Spirit, and SATA. The decrease in service was especially severe to Chicago O'Hare as between both United and American decreased the number of one-way daily seats from nearly a combined 1,400 to today's 225 daily one-way seats. Nine flights of 727, 737, 757 and MD-80 service downgraded to today's regional jet use. Since the
HNTB-designed Bruce Sundlun Terminal opened in 1996, T. F. Green became more congested due to increased traffic and post-
9/11 security changes. Renovations followed, including expansion of baggage rooms to accommodate a new In-Line Explosive Detection System (EDS) Baggage Handling System, expanded security screening checkpoints, more concessions and ticket counters, and expansion of RIAC offices on the second and third floors. As part of a 2001 Master Plan, the FAA's Runway runway incursion action team (visiting in 2000) made a few recommendations including the closing of runway 5L/23R and converting it into a taxiway. Traffic increased to a high of 5.7 million passengers in 2005, while at the same time Boston Logan was handling 25 million passengers. After 2005, airlines started consolidating service at larger airports by withdrawing service and reducing frequencies at mid-sized hubs and small-sized hubs. Airports such as T. F. Green, Jacksonville, Bradley, etc. were affected. The recession and Boston Logan's proximity to the Providence metro area also took its toll on T. F. Green as numbers decreased to 3.5 million in 2015. In 2017 passenger figures grew to just shy of 4 million passengers. With the addition of Amazon Air, which includes its own Prime Jets plus DHL and Atlas Air Jets, cargo numbers increased to nearly 44 million pounds. Amazon moved their cargo service from T. F. Green to
Bradley International Airport on August 1, 2018. T. F. Green was visited by
Air Force One on October 25, 2010, a
Concorde operated by
British Airways on June 13, 1988, and an
Airbus A340 flown by
Iberia Airlines on June 1, 2011, which transported the Men's Spanish national soccer team for their match against the U.S. National Team on June 4, 2011, at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. T. F. Green was visited by
Air Force One again on October 31, 2014, carrying President
Barack Obama. From 1998 until 2013, T. F. Green had regular service to
Toronto Pearson International Airport first via Air Jazz and then by
Air Georgian after 9/11; both did business as express carriers for
Air Canada. In the early 1990s Leisure Air provided twice weekly seasonal service to Bermuda. Charters such as North American Air and Buffalo Air handled scheduled charter service to the
Azores from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. SATA International, now known as
Azores Airlines, has recently resumed seasonal service to the Azores, having previously offered service until 2010. In 2015, service was announced to
Frankfurt, Germany by
Condor and
Praia, in the
Cape Verde islands, by
TACV. The Condor service to Frankfurt marked the first non-stop route to mainland Europe from Providence; however, the flight was later suspended for unspecified reasons. February 6, 2017,
USA Today announced that
Norwegian Air had selected Providence's T. F. Green Airport as its base for flights to Europe.
Norwegian Air Shuttle operated from Providence using new
Boeing 737 MAX planes for its service to cities in Western Europe, however as of now the service is cut due to the
groundings of the aircraft related to its MCAS system. The official announcements were made February 23, 2017, with flights starting to
Belfast,
Cork,
Dublin,
Edinburgh and
Shannon. Later, flights were added to
Bergen in Norway,
Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe, and
Fort-de-France in Martinique. These routes were gradually dropped due to poor load factors, and the Boeing 737 MAX grounding. Norwegian's last flight from Providence operated on September 15, 2019. On October 1, 2017, T. F. Green's runway 5/23 was officially opened for use at its new expanded length of 8,700 feet. Planning on the project began in the 1990s, and work on the expansion began in 2013. The project included demolition of an existing neighborhood, removal of nearby utility poles and trees to clear approach lanes, and moving city park from one side of the airport to the other. Officials were hopeful that a longer runway would attract more longer-range nonstop flights, such as the international routes that
Norwegian Air began flying in 2017, as well as enhance safety for short-distance flights, giving pilots more runway to use in the case of poor weather conditions. The runway expansion was desired because, as the Rhode Island Airport Corporation (RIAC) wrote in 2001, the master plan completed in 1997 failed to envision the "tremendous growth" that T. F. Green experienced. The report identified the lack of runway length as a hindrance to "range and diversity of service", in particular emphasizing ability to reach non-hub cities, the west coast, and international locations. Challenges for T. F. Green in expanding the runway were the residential and commercial developments around it. Many residents opposed the expansion. In 2017, T. F. Green was named the official airport of the
New England Patriots. In 2017 the airport had 74,561 aircraft operations, average 204 per day: 50%
scheduled commercial, 14%
air taxi, 35%
general aviation and <1%
military. Thirty-three aircraft were then based at this airport: 55% single-
engine, 9% multi-engine, 30%
jet and 6%
helicopter. The
mainline airline with the largest presence at T. F. Green is Southwest, which carried 45.07% of all passengers in 2017, followed by American with 13.65%. RIAC believed the name change would both reflect the airport's international flight presence and better describe the location it serves. A bill introduced that month, H7673A, was not adopted. In 2021, revised proposal H6051, which would change the airport's name to "Rhode Island T.F. Green International Airport", was passed by the
Rhode Island House of Representatives on May 11. The proposal was approved by the
Rhode Island Senate the following month. In June 2021, the airport's name was officially changed. ==Facilities==