Stewart Dairy Farm In 1930 Thomas "Archie" Stewart, an early aviation enthusiast and descendant of prominent local dairy farmer Lachlan Stewart, convinced his uncle Samuel Stewart to donate "Stoney Lonesome", split between the
towns of
Newburgh and
New Windsor, to the nearby city of
Newburgh for use as an airport. With the city strapped for cash due to the
Depression, however, it was unable to develop it in any way.
Stewart Airfield In 1934
Douglas MacArthur, then superintendent of the
United States Military Academy, proposed flight training
cadets at the airport. The city sold the land to the military academy for one dollar. A small dirt
airstrip was cleared and graded. One of the gates at USMA has been known as Stoney Lonesome Gate ever since. During
World War II many barracks and other buildings, which still stand, were built on the base. In January 2008, the Town of New Windsor received a $2.5 million
grant from the state to
demolish 30–40 buildings as part of the redevelopment of the former base. First Columbia, the developer, said that 20–30 could be retained and reused.
Stewart Air Force / Air National Guard Base at the ANG base, as seen in 2012 After the creation of the
United States Air Force following World War II, the army airfield was converted to an air force base while still being used for training of cadets at West Point. Stewart became the home of Headquarters 1st Region Army Air Defense Command in 1966. It remained so until the deactivation of the Nike Hercules system at the end of 1974. The air force base was deactivated in 1970 and it officially remained unoccupied by the Air Force until 1983, when the
105th Airlift Wing (105 AW) and the 213th Engineer Installation Squadron (213 EIS) of the
New York Air National Guard took up quarters. The
Air National Guard unit has flown support missions not only for U.S. military operations in
Iraq and
Afghanistan but also for humanitarian relief efforts. This area of the airport, now called
Stewart Air National Guard Base, was home to the Air Force
C-5 Galaxy aircraft before being replaced by the newer and smaller
C-17 Globemaster III in 2011. Stewart ANGB also hosted
VMGR-452, a
Marine Corps Reserve squadron flying the
KC-130J, until 2022.
Stewart International Airport MTA expansion plan In the early 1970s,
Governor Nelson Rockefeller's administration saw the potential for Stewart to support the metropolitan area. Its long runway made it particularly attractive for intercontinental service via
supersonic transport (SST), then under development in the U.S. and elsewhere. The
Metropolitan Transportation Authority was the first government body to try to convert it into the New York metropolitan area's fourth major airport.
New York State Department of Transportation ownership In early 1981, the 52 U.S. hostages held at the former U.S. embassy in
Tehran, Iran, returned to American soil at Stewart International following two weeks at U.S. bases in Germany and 444 days of captivity, ending the Iran hostage crisis. The route they took from Stewart International to West Point is marked today as "Freedom Road." The next year the state transferred control from MTA to its own
Department of Transportation (NYSDOT), with a mandate to improve and develop the airport. Three years later
W.R. Grace became the first private tenant when it built a corporate jet hangar, and the following year an
industrial park was built nearby. Finally, in 1990, commercial airline service began with
American Airlines offering service with three daily round trips to both Chicago and
Raleigh/Durham.
Continuing development issues As the 1980s wore on, veterans of earlier battles over Stewart returned to start new ones. NYSDOT and the Stewart Airport Commission found themselves overseeing not only the airport but the acres of now-vacant land the state had acquired a decade before. After turning over management of most of the property to the state's
Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), which was better equipped for the task, it still faced the problem of what to do with the land. The region's needs had changed. With
IBM and other large industrial concerns cutting workers and closing plants, and people leaving, a large swath of buildable land with few environmental problems was seen by many in the local business community as a goose's golden egg. It couldn't be a sprawling airport, but it could be something else, they thought. But those people who remained or moved up from more crowded areas to the south had begun to enjoy the outdoor recreation possibilities the lands, referred to variously as the Stewart Properties or the buffer, offered. Mountain bikers, horses,
dirt bikers,
ATVers, and
hikers had all begun to explore and create trails, and DEC's management opened up the area as a popular spot for local
hunters and
anglers. DEC had also released captured
beavers on the properties, who built dams and created new
wetlands. One local hunter, Ben Kissam, formed the Stewart Park and Reserve Coalition (SPARC) in 1987 to oppose efforts to develop the lands. They and other environmentalists and
conservationists argued that the whole area would be better off left as a park, pointing to the growing diversity of species on the lands and the state's original promise not to redevelop the area. They were joined, too, by some area residents who said that the existing air traffic, particularly the military C-5s, was noisy enough as it was. Also generating a lot of noise was the continuing debate in
Orange County about what to do with the land, with participants' choice of words ("buffer" vs. "properties") suggesting where they stood, and interpretations differing about just how much of the land was really meant to serve as a buffer. The administration of
Mario Cuomo tried several times to come up with a plan that would balance these interests, but failed. As one of its last acts, it started a renovation of the passenger terminal using a federal grant. SWF had occasionally had scheduled air-taxi service, but in April 1990
American Airlines arrived with three
Boeing 727-200 nonstops a day to Chicago and three more to its new hub in Raleigh–Durham. Nonstop flights to Dallas Fort/Worth were later added as well. Jet nonstops to Atlanta (Delta) and Pittsburgh (USAir) appeared in the next couple of years; Delta later added Cincinnati, and USAir tried Baltimore.
Privatization In 1994
George Pataki campaigned on improving efficiencies by privatizing money-losing state projects.
Ronald Lauder, who had written a book about European successes in privatizations, suggested Stewart be privatized. Pataki created the New York State Council on Privatization and appointed Lauder its chair. Federal law at the time required that all airports providing passenger service had to be owned by some public entity. With much support from the New York delegation, the
United States Congress eventually passed legislation allowing five airports to be privatized as a pilot program, providing certain conditions, such as approval by the
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and by the carriers representing at least two-thirds of the airport's flights. In 1997 the state formally began, through the
Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), the process of soliciting bids for a 99-year lease on the airport and, potentially, the adjacent undeveloped lands as well, whatever bidders wanted. Efforts by SPARC, now headed by Kissam's widow Sandra, and other citizen activists to find out about who might be bidding and what they planned to do with Stewart were blocked by the state's invocation of a clause in its State Finance Law prohibiting disclosure of competitive bids prior to the award of the contract: an interpretation that survived a court challenge. Two years later, after approval by the state's
attorney general and
comptroller as well as the FAA and the carriers, A four-lane east–west access road, International Boulevard, would also be created to better solve the airport's longstanding access problems (see below). Conveniently, the initial price tag, $35 million, was exactly the amount bid by National Express. The new exit, designated 5A, was opened in the fourth quarter of 2007. The new north–south route is now designated
Route 747. Stewart State Forest sign at parking area on Route 207 In July 2006, the state formally transferred ownership of the state forest from DOT to DEC, ending the process of creating Stewart State Forest. Orange County was not thrilled with the state's decision to charge it $3.7 million for the area near the exit, saying that it was too much on top of the costs it would incur putting in infrastructure. DOT said it was just asking fair market value for the land.
NEG Management NEG's marketing initiatives included several proposed new names for the airport to emphasize its proximity to the city. The last one, in 2006, which would have dropped the "Stewart" name entirely, met with local opposition and was ultimately dropped. Stewart has a limited selection of flights available and is relatively uncrowded most of the day. Some tenants have moved into nearby former military buildings, but most remain as unoccupied as they were the day the base was closed. It has drawn some passengers from western
Connecticut who might otherwise have flown out of
Hartford. But most of the fliers within Stewart's catchment area have continued to prefer
Albany International Airport,
Newark or other metropolitan airports.
Delta pulled out of the airport shortly after the privatization announcement, ostensibly to better serve new routes it had won to Latin America, leaving it to
codeshare partners Comair and ASA. Even one of the "tourist draws" for the airport evaporated in 2003 when the
Concorde was retired. Its pilots had sometimes used the lengthy runway to practice
touch-and-go landings. NEG's dealings with the state were not as harmonious as they were initially represented; documents made public by SPARC after the privatization was completed showed that there were many lingering issues between the two parties even at that time and that NEG had in fact considered breaking the deal at one point (as it would later ultimately do). The company has gone through some local management shuffles as well, and the parent corporation's sale of East Midlands, considered the example it would follow with Stewart, was a cause for concern in the region. While some local officials expressed disappointment, others saw NEG as getting out of the airport business entirely to concentrate on its core business in the bus and rail sectors. They hoped at first that another European company with experience running privatized airports would be interested, and industry analysts said the timing was good. AirTran, which had previously served Newburgh in 1995, was subsequently acquired by and merged into
Southwest Airlines, which in turn currently does not serve the airport. In 2005, the airport was used to transport emergency personnel and supplies to help the cleanup after the destruction of
Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the
Gulf Coast.
Port Authority takeover and end of privatization On January 25, 2007, the Port Authority voted to buy the lease for Stewart. It took over operating control on November 1, 2007, after New Jersey's acting governor
Richard Codey signed a bill the
New Jersey Legislature had to pass, changing the law to allow the move. PANYNJ will pay NEG $78.5 million for the remaining 93 years on its lease. The day after the takeover, an opening ceremony was held in which New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer attended and the Port Authority flag was raised. It has set aside $500 million in its ten-year capital improvement plan to expand the airport. The Port Authority sees Stewart as offering relief to those airports and (especially)
Teterboro, estimating it could handle five times its present passenger volume. It will probably follow its standard procedure and contract the actual operations of the airport out. It was reported in January 2008 that Stewart had achieved its goal and had handled 970,000 passengers in 2007. A 2007 plan envisioned changing Stewart's image over the next 20 years: major
renovations such as a new
terminal, a train station next to the new terminal connecting the airport to
Metro North via a new spur from the
Port Jervis Line, a extension of runway 16–34, new
taxiways, and a major expansion of the cargo facilities. A new
control tower has been built. In the fourth quarter of 2007
Interstate 84's new Drury Lane exit,
NY Route 747, and International Boulevard opened.
American Airlines, which had served Stewart since 1990, ended
American Eagle regional jet service to
Chicago O'Hare International Airport on September 5, 2007. In 1991, American was operating up to five mainline departures a day nonstop to Chicago O'Hare with
Boeing 727-200 jetliners. In February 2008, the PA's new general manager, Diannae Ehler, said she had been discussing the possibility of foreign flights with a number of European carriers. She felt encouraged and hoped that by 2009 there could be regular passenger service between Stewart and some European destinations.
AirTran Airways ended service to the airport that same year. On December 5, 2016, General Manager Edmond Harrison announced that
Norwegian Air Shuttle planned to set up a base at Stewart for flights to Europe using its Irish subsidiary. The destinations out of Stewart were
Belfast–International,
Bergen,
Dublin,
Edinburgh and
Shannon. The first international flight departed for Edinburgh on June 15, 2017. On September 14, 2019,
Norwegian Air Shuttle ended service. By 2020, American Eagle had reduced service to one daily flight to
Philadelphia. This flight was suspended on October 7, 2020, was resumed on January 5, 2021, and then ended for a final time on September 30, 2021. On June 9, 2022, Icelandic airline
Play began a daily service to
Keflavik with connections to other European destinations. Play ended service to Stewart on September 1, 2025. On May 12, 2023,
Frontier Airlines announced that their Stewart to
Orlando flights would be cut after July 2, 2023, meaning that their presence in the airport would be coming to an end after less than 2 years. Between October 2021 and July 2, 2023, Frontier had commenced and ended flights to
Atlanta,
Miami,
Orlando,
Raleigh, and
Tampa from SWF. This left
Allegiant Air as the only airline in Stewart with domestic destinations. On November 8, 2023,
Breeze Airways announced year-round, twice-weekly service to
Orlando, FL beginning February 15, 2024 and seasonal, twice-weekly service to
Charleston, SC beginning May 10, 2024. On September 17, 2024,
Atlantic Airways discontinued service to Stewart. On September 1, 2025,
Play operated its final flight between Iceland and Stewart International Airport. The airline had planned to withdraw from the United States market; however, it filed for bankruptcy and ceased all operations prior to the completion of this withdrawal. On January 3, 2026,
Venezuelan president
Nicolás Maduro and his wife were
captured in a ground operation as part of the
2025-2026 U.S. military actions against Venezuela, and after being flown out of Venezuela and transported around the region on U.S. military transport, flown to Stewart International Airport, where he initially arrived in the United States around 5 p.m. under escort on an FBI aircraft, arriving at the
Stewart Air National Guard Base located within the airport and on its property. He was later transported via helicopter to New York City for processing and transfer to the
Metropolitan Detention Center for detention while awaiting trial on
U.S. federal charges. ==Facilities and operations==