Hollywood Burbank Airport’s old passenger terminal handled its final flights on October 12, 2026. A new terminal opened across the airfield on October 13, ending a 96-year association with the original terminal site. That change raises an appealing aviation-history question: which of America’s earliest airport terminals can you still travel through?
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The answer depends on what “still in use” means. Some prewar terminals survive at airports without scheduled airline service; others have become rental-car offices, company buildings or historic attractions. Reagan National’s 1941 Terminal 1 is a particularly striking survivor because it still handles scheduled airline passengers. LaGuardia’s older Marine Air Terminal survives too, but its airline service is currently suspended. And at JFK, the celebrated 1962 TWA Flight Center now serves travelers as a hotel rather than an airline terminal.
Seven historic terminals, seven different outcomes
| Terminal | Original era | Status in October 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Grand Central Air Terminal, Glendale, California | 1929 | Restored historic building; former airfield is gone |
| Hollywood Burbank Airport, California | 1930 | Original terminal site retired October 12; old complex awaits demolition |
| Felts Field, Spokane, Washington | 1932 | Historic terminal survives at a general-aviation airport |
| Marine Air Terminal, LaGuardia, New York | 1939–40 | Historic terminal survives; scheduled airline service temporarily absent |
| Reagan National Terminal 1, Arlington, Virginia | 1941 | Historic terminal complex still handles scheduled airline passengers |
| Long Beach Airport, California | 1941–42 | Restored airport terminal now used for rental-car services, not airline check-in |
| TWA Flight Center, JFK Airport, New York | 1962 | Restored as the TWA Hotel; no longer handles airline check-in or departures |
This is not an exhaustive list or a claim that these are the seven oldest surviving terminals nationwide. The later TWA Flight Center illustrates an especially successful second life. Dates distinguish construction and design from the first use by passengers, where they differ.
Reagan National: a 1941 terminal you can still fly from
Washington National Airport opened June 16, 1941, with a terminal intended to look modern without ignoring the capital’s architectural traditions. The original building combined streamlined lines with classical references and a terrace overlooking the airfield. Today, the airport calls this historic complex Terminal 1; its nine gates, A1 through A9, still handle scheduled flights, including Southwest, Frontier and Air Canada service listed in the airport’s current security guide.
That is a stronger claim to ongoing passenger use than merely finding an old airport building standing near a runway. Terminal 1 has undergone expansions and alterations, and the original historic lobby is not identical to the later gate areas. Still, the 1941 building remains part of an operating passenger-terminal complex at an airport serving scheduled commercial flights.
Its next chapter is already being debated. A federal environmental review is in progress for a Terminal 1 redevelopment that would replace the later circular gate area known as the “banjo.” Planning documents call for preserving the original historic building while modernizing the passenger facilities around it. As at Burbank, the challenge is reconciling old airport architecture with contemporary operating standards, although Washington’s proposal would preserve a significant historic core.
LaGuardia: the 1940 flying-boat terminal without scheduled flights
LaGuardia’s Marine Air Terminal was designed in 1939 and opened in 1940 to handle Pan Am’s transatlantic flying boats. The circular Art Deco rotunda survives, along with James Brooks’s enormous mural Flight, a reminder that airport terminals were once civic showpieces. The National Park Service identifies the building as a rare survivor of that first generation of passenger-airline architecture.
But calling the Marine Air Terminal America’s oldest active passenger terminal would be misleading at this moment. Spirit stopped passenger operations in May 2026, leaving LaGuardia’s Terminal A without the scheduled flights that previously used it. JetBlue has since acquired 22 Spirit operating slots with an FAA exemption effective October 8, raising the possibility of service returning, but the exemption does not itself confirm a terminal move or a reopening date.
FlightWisdom has followed both the terminal’s unusual history and the JetBlue slot transaction. The survival of the rotunda and the operation of a scheduled passenger gate are separate milestones. LaGuardia has securely achieved the first; its immediate commercial future remains unsettled.
Long Beach: preserved, restored and given a new job
Long Beach Airport’s landmark terminal was built in 1941 and was supposed to open December 8 of that year. The attack on Pearl Harbor the previous day postponed the formal opening until April 25, 1942. Designed by William Horace Austin and Kenneth Smith Wing, the building retains a Streamline Moderne facade and a remarkable floor mosaic composed of roughly 1.6 million pieces. A major restoration completed in 2024 uncovered sections of the artwork that had been concealed for decades.
The airport itself still serves airline passengers, but a departing traveler doesn’t check in at the 1942 counters. Ticketing moved to a new lobby in May 2022, and the historic building’s former ticketing area became rental-car service space. The airport confirmed that rental-car operators moved in on December 17, 2025.
Long Beach demonstrates how a terminal can remain useful to travelers without performing its original job. The preservation work protects the architecture and lets arriving passengers encounter it, while newer structures perform security screening and airline check-in. While it may not be a working historic airport terminal, it remains actively used.
Felts Field and Grand Central: older buildings, different kinds of survival
Felts Field’s 1932 terminal in Spokane once served airline passengers, including United Air Lines, with ticket counters and waiting areas beneath Art Deco ornament. Its commercial-airline role ended as service moved to the airport that became Spokane International. The historic building survives at a functioning airport, which Spokane Airports describes today as primarily a general-aviation field with flight training, charter flying and related services.
The old terminal has housed the Skyway Cafe, although the airport currently says the cafe is temporarily closed for renovation. Felts Field therefore qualifies as an unusually early passenger-terminal survivor at an active airfield, but it is not an example of continuous scheduled-airline-terminal service.
Grand Central Air Terminal in Glendale, California, offers the clearest example of architectural preservation without airport operation. The celebrated 1929 terminal was restored as part of Disney’s Glendale campus, but the original runway is long gone. City preservation records document the restoration of the tower, arcades and other historic features. The building survives from commercial aviation’s formative era; it no longer functions as an airport terminal in any operational sense.
JFK’s TWA Flight Center: a terminal reborn as a hotel
The TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport is younger than the prewar terminals above, but it may be America’s most recognizable example of a terminal rescued from obsolescence. Designed by Eero Saarinen and opened in 1962, its sweeping concrete roof and sculptural interiors evoked the promise of jet-age travel. Airliners grew, passenger volumes increased and security procedures changed, making the landmark difficult to use as a conventional airline terminal. It closed in 2001, but the building survived. What it connected to was demolished, and replaced with a new terminal.
In 2019, the restored Flight Center became the centerpiece of the TWA Hotel. The original building now houses the hotel lobby, restaurants, bars and aviation-history exhibits, while two newer wings contain 512 guest rooms. Saarinen’s distinctive flight tubes survive, connecting the complex with the area of JFK’s Terminal 5. The New York Landmarks Conservancy documents the preservation effort that helped keep the terminal standing after TWA’s operations ended.
A traveler can still walk through the restored building without checking in for a flight there. That makes TWA different from Reagan National’s passenger-serving Terminal 1 and from Long Beach’s conversion to rental-car counters: its new primary business is hospitality, with aviation history as the attraction. Its success also demonstrates that demolition and abandonment are not the only possible outcomes when an airport outgrows a celebrated building.
What Burbank’s closure changes
Hollywood Burbank’s original terminal opened in 1930, making its 2026 retirement unusually consequential. Yet the complex that served its last passengers was extensively rebuilt after a 1966 fire and altered repeatedly over subsequent decades. As we explained in our history of Burbank’s terminal, it represented continuity of place and airport service more clearly than survival of a pristine 1930 building.
Commercial service moved into a new 14-gate terminal farther from the runway on October 13. The airport’s replacement-project plans call for demolition of the outgoing terminal after operations transfer. Safety clearances, seismic requirements and accessibility helped drive a decision that preservation alone could not resolve. We have not seen any indication that any part of the structure will survive in a manner similar to the other examples.
Whether it is still located on an active airport, still serves travelers in some capacity, or still processes scheduled commercial flights, these are still examples of the oldest airport passenger terminal and how they continue in the modern age. Reagan National supplies a compelling example of a 1941 passenger terminal still tied to active gates; Long Beach and Felts Field preserve earlier aviation settings for different uses; LaGuardia’s Marine Air Terminal may carry passengers again; and JFK’s TWA Flight Center welcomes travelers in an entirely new role.
For travelers who value aviation history, these buildings are memorable examples of that history. They show what each airport preserved, what found a viable new role, and what was ultimately replaced as commercial aviation changed around it.
