Lehigh Valley International Airport | |||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Aerial photo of Lehigh Valley International Airport (ABE), 2005
|
|||||||||||||||
Summary | |||||||||||||||
Airport type | Public | ||||||||||||||
Owner/Operator | Lehigh–Northampton Airport Authority | ||||||||||||||
Serves | Lehigh Valley | ||||||||||||||
Location | Allentown, Pennsylvania Hanover, Township | ||||||||||||||
Elevation AMSL | 393 ft / 120 m | ||||||||||||||
Coordinates | 40°39′08.4″N 075°26′25.7″W / 40.652333°N 75.440472°W | ||||||||||||||
Website | flylvia.com | ||||||||||||||
Map | |||||||||||||||
Location of airport in Pennsylvania / United States | |||||||||||||||
Runways | |||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
Statistics | |||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
Sources: airport website and FAA
|
Aircraft operations | 100,048 (2,012) |
---|---|
Based aircraft | 117 (2,012) |
Total passengers (2014) | 582,000 |
Lehigh Valley International Airport (IATA: ABE, ICAO: KABE, FAA LID: ABE) (formerly Allentown–Bethlehem–Easton International Airport) is a public airport in Hanover Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. Parts of it are in Catasauqua and Allen Township, Northampton County, Pennsylvania. It is 3 miles (5 km) northeast of Allentown, in the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania, the third most-populous metropolitan region in the state (after Philadelphia and Pittsburgh).
It is owned and operated by the Lehigh–Northampton Airport Authority. The number of people using the airport fell by 24.3% from 723,556 in FY2012 to 582,000 in FY2014 and the airport has seen steep declines in passenger usage since the early 2000s when annual traffic twice hit levels above 1,000,000 passengers. For 2012 the FAA has categorized ABE airport as a "nonhub" but in previous years the FAA categorized the airport as a "small hub".
The airport is about 75 driving miles from Philadelphia International Airport, 80 driving miles from Newark Liberty International Airport and 55 driving miles from Trenton-Mercer Airport.
Lehigh Valley International Airport opened in 1929 and is one of the very few in the United States of America that serves its community from its original location. Scheduled airline flights began on September 16, 1935 by United Airlines Boeing 247s. The airport hangar served as the passenger terminal; the first terminal building at the airport was built in 1938 as a Works Projects Administration (WPA) project.