By: Greg Noble    
      
   Posted: 4:16 AM, Jan 12, 2017   
      
   HEBRON, Ky. – Out-of-town flyers expecting to land in Cincinnati sometimes   
   look surprised when the flight attendants welcome them to Kentucky.    
      
   It's not the only surprise they get when they arrive here.   
      
   Why does my baggage ticket say CVG, they wonder, when they expect the airport   
   code for Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport to be CIN?   
      
   They're lucky their tags aren't marked CIN, though, or their bags would wind   
   up in Carroll, Iowa.   
      
   The answers go back seven decades to a time when some politically-savvy   
   Northern Kentuckians stole the region's commercial airport out from under the   
   noses of some sleepy Ohio politicians and voters.   
      
   WATCH the first commercial flights land and take off from CVG in the video   
   player above.   
      
   Lunken Airport on the city's east end was the Tri-State's center for   
   commercial air traffic at the time World War II was beginning in Europe. But   
   geography, the Great Flood of 1937, the war and the shortsightedness of   
   Cincinnati leaders and voters helped    
   change all that.   
      
   Lunken, a city-owned airport laid out in the Ohio River valley, was prone to   
   flooding. In 1937, it was 20 to 30 feet under water. The nearby hillsides,   
   which often locked in fog, also prevented the airport from expanding the   
   runways beyond 4,200 feet.      
      
   When the war started, the Army Air Corps looked across the country for   
   airfields where they could train pilots – or places where they could build   
   training fields. Lunken's runways were too short for bombers, and the city   
   never offered it to the Air    
   Corps. Besides that, Hamilton County leaders were fighting among themselves.   
   Several pushed for a new airport in Blue Ash, only to have voters turn it   
   down.     
      
   A Northern Kentucky congressman named Brent Spence (later memorialized with a   
   bridge) and other NKY leaders saw an opportunity to get into the air travel   
   business. Boone County, widely undeveloped in those days, had plenty of flat   
   farmland but no money.    
   Kenton County agreed to buy nearly 900 acres 12.5 miles from Fountain Square   
   as long as it could own and run the airport.   
      
   Spence and Sen. Alben Barkley lobbied for federal funds, and two months after   
   the attack on Pearl Harbor, FDR approved money for site development.   
   Ultimately, Northern Kentucky got $2 million to build four 5,500-feet runways   
   and an administration    
   building. In the days before I-275, State Highway Commissioner Lyter Donaldson   
   arranged for public money to build an east-west highway to the airport, named   
   Donaldson Road.   
      
   SEE more photos of CVG at the Kenton County Public Library website.   
      
   By the time the Army Air Corps started using the facility and the first B-17   
   landed on Aug. 15, 1944, the war was winding down. A year later, the Air Corps   
   declared it surplus property and turned it over to the local governments.   
      
   Northern Kentucky now had a $4 million airport. On Oct. 27, 1946, it opened a   
   small wooden administration building, and less than three months later, with a   
   three-story terminal nearly finished, American Airlines, Delta and TWA   
   abandoned Lunken and moved    
   to Greater Cincinnati Airport.   
      
   Or CVG, for short. The airport code stands for Covington. CIN was already   
   taken by a sleepy, little Iowa town – not that Northern Kentucky leaders   
   would have used it anyway. They grudgingly called it Greater Cincinnati   
   Airport but made sure the sign    
   over the front entrance to the terminal also said Kenton County, Ky.   
      
   That's right: an airport named after a city in another state and the county   
   next door.   
      
   CVG had more and longer runways than LaGuardia, and onlookers enjoyed watching   
   planes take off and land from the observation deck on the terminal roof.   
      
   "This is one of the finest airports in the country. I'm awfully glad to be   
   using it," said Capt. B.W. Robinson, who flew the first commercial flight into   
   CVG.   
      
   The first flights – two-engine DC-3s with 14 sleeper seats - landed Friday   
   morning, Jan. 10, 1947. An American flight from Cleveland was first to arrive   
   at 9:23 a.m. A Delta flight from Atlanta was less than a minute behind. TWA   
   was five minutes behind    
   Delta.   
      
   Several hundred curious witnesses, airport employees and local dignitaries   
   cheered as the wheels touched down, according to the Kentucky Post. The first   
   two passengers to step off were Eleanor Fish, of Troy, Ohio, and Jack P.   
   Rattner of Clifton. They    
   were startled by flashbulbs as they deplaned, the Post reported.   
      
   But J.L. Wiggins and her four-month-old son, Jimmy, had the most unusual   
   trip.  She expected to change planes after they flew into Lunken at 5:20 a.m.   
   from South Carolina, but she didn't know they had to change airports, too.   
      
   A limo drove them to CVG, where Wiggins bought the first ticket ever sold in   
   the terminal to take them to Akron on the first plane out at 9:35 a.m.   
      
   An American, four-engine DC-4 (42 passenger seats or 30 seats as a sleeper),   
   drew more oohs and aahs when it took off at 11:20 a.m.   
      
   Hamilton County leaders didn't give up the airport without a fight. They took   
   two more shots at passing a levy, but Blue Ash residents aggressively opposed   
   and defeated it.   
      
   That's why, 70 years later, West Siders trying to avoid I-75/71 traffic get   
   the rare privilege of driving through three states to and from the airport.   
      
   http://www.wcpo.com/news/our-community/from-the-vault/from-the-v   
   ult-why-cincinnatis-airport-is-in-kentucky-70-years-after-first-flights   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)