Ted Stevens/Anchorage International Airport Access Road outbound

Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport is a major airport in the U.S. state of Alaska, located 5 miles southwest of downtown Anchorage. The airport is named for Ted Stevens, a U.S. senator from Alaska in office from 1968 to 2009. Built in 1951, the airport was served in the 1950s by Alaska Airlines, Northwest Orient, Pacific Northern Airlines and Reeve Aleutian Airways, using aircraft ranging from Douglas DC-3s to Boeing 377s, and was also a refueling stop for Canadian Pacific Air Lines service to the Far East (one such aircraft being involved in a 1951 disappearance). From 1955 to 2011, the eastern end of the airport's southernmost runway connected to the Kulis Air National Guard Base. By the mid-1980s the airport's nickname was "Crossroads of the World". Anchorage was a common stopover for passengers flying between Europe and East Asia, because airspace in China, the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries were off-limits and because the first generation of jets and widebody airliners did not have the range to fly non-stop across the Pacific Ocean.