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Albany International Airport (IATA: ALB, ICAO: KALB) is an airport of entry [1] serving Albany, New York. It is located in Latham, New York, in the Town of Colonie about 6 miles (10 km) north of Albany.
Albany International Airport can accept most aircraft. Although the airport is significant and well-equipped, it is essentially a domestic airport, with its only scheduled international flights to Canada.
ALB has pay-as-you-go Wi-Fi access throughout the entire airport provided by WiFiFee.
Recent history
Albany International Airport is unique because it is one of the only 4 airports in the world using dual jetbridges (one bridge for the back, one for the front). However, only Southwest Airlines uses them. US Airways used to have major operations at Albany. Including its own hangar, US Airways Club, MetroJet services to Orlando and Baltimore, and dozens of mainline flights a day. These services were cut down when US Airways went bankrupt in the period after the 9-11 attacks. Construction has recently been completed on the 1,300-foot (400 m) runway extension for runway 1/19. The runway now measures 8,500 feet (2,600 m). [2] With the January 2006 shutdown of Independence Air, the airport is in further discussions with JetBlue Airways (which serves all other major upstate airports), AirTran (which served Albany for a brief period in the late 1990s) [3], and Frontier Airlines [4] to expand service to the airport. In the past ALB had been serviced by Delta Express flying to Orlando and Tampa, MetroJet flying to Orlando and Baltimore. In those airlines' final years of operation, when they flew alongside Southwest Airlines, Albany had up to eight flights to Orlando. Albany International Airport on a clear August day
In early 2001, CommutAir started to invest in an Albany hub. The hub was to connect smaller cities with bigger cities with Continental Express and mainline. At its peak CommutAir served Allentown, Bangor, Binghamton, Boston, Buffalo, Burlington, Elmira, Portland, Harrisburg, Nantucket, Scranton, La Guardia, Islip, Hartford, White Plains, Manchester, Providence, Syracuse, Rochester, Lake Placid, Montreal, Ottawa, and Plattsburgh. The hub was closed down in late 2005 to shift operations to Cleveland. About half of the markets did do very well.
There have been discussions between the Town of Colonie and The Albany Airport Board regarding the construction of a new concourse. The concourse will be built to satisfy the needs of growing US Airways and Southwest.[5] The new concourse will also be useful to attract new airlines to ALB. The concourse will have about 10 gates. However, there is insufficient space for the new facility at this time.