Departure
97%
vs 95% ▲ 2
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, formerly Standiford Field, lies just south of downtown Louisville, Kentucky, and is best known today as the global night-sorting hub for UPS Airlines. For a simulator pilot it offers a rare mix of civil airline traffic, heavy cargo operations and a co-located Air National Guard base, all served by a full set of long, well-equipped runways and a busy control tower.
Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport sits on the southern edge of Louisville, Kentucky, and is operated by the Louisville Regional Airport Authority. It began life as Standiford Field, was renamed Louisville International Airport in 1995 and took its present name in 2019 in honour of the boxer and Louisville native Muhammad Ali. The field is a civil-military airport: alongside scheduled passenger flights it hosts the UPS Airlines Worldport hub, one of the busiest cargo operations in the world, and the Kentucky Air National Guard's 123rd Airlift Wing flying Lockheed C-130 Hercules transports from the co-located Louisville Air National Guard Base. For a visiting simulator pilot this combination of heavy cargo jets, military transports and airline traffic on long concrete runways makes it a distinctive and busy field to fly into.
The airport lies south of downtown Louisville within Class C airspace, reflecting its status as a busy commercial and military field. It sits at coordinates 38.1741, -85.7365 at an elevation of 476 feet.
The airport has three physical runways, all hard-surfaced and lit. Runway 17R/35L is the longest, at 11,039 feet on the 17R threshold and 10,851 feet on the 35L threshold, and is equipped with an ILS. Runway 17L/35R measures 8,248 feet from 17L and 8,125 feet from 35R, also with ILS. Runway 11/29 is 7,238 feet in each direction, with an ILS serving runway 29.
Air traffic services are provided by a control tower, with clearance delivery, ground, tower and departure/approach functions split across discrete frequencies. Approach and departure are worked on 123.675 MHz, ground on 121.7 MHz, and tower on 124.2 MHz. The ATIS broadcasts on 118.725 MHz. A UNICOM frequency of 122.95 MHz is also listed. A separate Air National Guard operations frequency of 26.81 MHz serves the co-located military base, and a CLD (clearance delivery) frequency of 126.1 MHz is published. Instrument approaches are available, with ILS equipment on runways 17R, 35L, 17L, 35R and 29.
Standiford Field was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1941 on land south of Louisville chosen because it had escaped the 1937 Ohio River flood; it was named for Dr Elisha David Standiford, a local businessman and politician who had owned part of the site. The airfield remained under Army control until 1947, when it passed to the Louisville Air Board and opened to the public, with American, Eastern and TWA moving their commercial services across from the smaller, more centrally located Bowman Field. At opening the airfield had a single 4,000-foot runway; by the mid-1950s it had three 5,000-foot runways numbered 1, 6 and 11. A proper terminal, the Lee Terminal, opened in 1950 with capacity for 150,000 passengers a year and was later expanded, including a Delta Air Lines concourse added in 1970. Scheduled jet services began in 1962 with Eastern Airlines 720s flying to Idlewild. The 1980s Louisville Airport Improvement Plan brought a new landside terminal and, to support growing UPS operations, parallel runways: runway 17L/35R and the long runway 17R/35L were opened around the time the airport was renamed Louisville International Airport in 1995. The same period saw the Kentucky Air National Guard relocate to the field with its own aircraft, along with a new UPS air mail facility, corporate hangars and a new control tower. A further terminal renovation was completed in 2005. The airport adopted its current name, Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, in 2019 in honour of the Louisville-born boxer.
The airport today combines scheduled passenger airline services with one of the world's busiest cargo operations, serving as the Worldport hub for UPS Airlines' international freight network, and continues to host the Kentucky Air National Guard's C-130 Hercules operations from the adjoining Air National Guard base. It is a Class C, tower-controlled field with full instrument approach capability on its main runways.