Flight 209, its multi-hued blue livery glistening in the afternoon sun as it approaches the airport terminal, is the second of three JetBlue flights from New York City scheduled to arrive at Long Beach.

As it touches down, Flight 209 officially enters the record books as one of the nearly 340,000 airplane calls at Long Beach Airport each year, making the airport one of the busiest in the world.

Flight 209’s 150 passengers have little idea that they are now members of the nearly 3 million passengers that move through the airport each year.

No doubt also unknown by many of the passengers is that Long Beach, and its airport, have been part of the aviation world for nearly 100 years.

Just seven years after the Wright Brothers’ historic flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903, Long Beach local Bernard Birnie constructed a 45-foot-long biplane in his barn for the then-colossal sum of $3,000. In May of 1910, he launched his craft across the flats northwest of town, becoming the first person to fly over Long Beach in an airplane.

The nation at the time was also caught up in the excitement of airplanes, so much so that the nation’s first air show – named the Los Angeles International Air Meet, but actually held in northwest Long Beach – opened in 1910 to more than 254,000 spectators during its 11 day run.

Just a year later, Calbraith Perry Rodgers permanently cemented the city in the aviation history books when he completed the first transcontinental flight in history by landing on the eastern beach of Long Beach.

The event prompted the Los Angeles Herald to note in its coverage, “There are more aviators qualified on Southern California fields than any other place in the United States.”

One of these pilots was Long Beach native Earl S. Daugherty, who in 1911 had become the 87th licensed pilot in the nation. Eight years later, in 1919, Daugherty leased property about a mile west of the current airport site and opened the city’s first school of aviation. From this dirt-covered expanse, Daugherty offered flying lessons and performed aerial barnstorming shows.

Under withering lobbying from Daugherty, now known as the city’s “King of Aviation”, City Hall set aside 80 acres of municipal land in 1924 (located at the southwest corner of the current airport) to begin construction of a municipal airfield and related facilities.

Within just a few years, the municipal airfield was considered one of the finest in Southern California, and by 1928 consisted of 380 acres, 16 commercial hangars large enough to house 75 or more planes, three aircraft manufacturers and two well-equipped service shops.

However, 1928 was also a year of tragedy for the Long Beach aviation community. On Dec. 8, Daugherty was killed in the crash of his new Laird biplane. Long Beach Municipal Airport was eventually renamed Daugherty Field in honor of the hometown pioneer.

Three years later, the Army Air Corps, completing a move from Santa Monica to Long Beach, finished upgrades on the airfield and new military facilities. The airfield continued to grow during the 1930s, with two permanent runways constructed, along with additional military facilities and construction of the now-iconic terminal begun under the New Deal WPA program.

In 1936, the Civil Aeronautics Administration – the forerunner of today’s Federal Aviation Administration – formally activated the Long Beach tower, giving the airport the designation LGB.

Although the first recorded noise complaints by local residents were registered with City Hall during the 1930s, the city continued to pour money into the airport, and by the end of the decade had purchased another 255 acres for further expansion.

Long Beach again became the center of the aviation world, when in 1938, Douglas “Wrong-Way” Corrigan left Daugherty Field for New York and then, intending to fly back to Long Beach a month later, flew the “wrong way” to Ireland by mistake.

During World War II, Daugherty Field expanded under the hand of the War Department and saw the completion of the adjacent Douglas Aircraft plant. At the height of Douglas’ wartime production, a completed airplane was leaving Long Beach Airport every minute, day and night, headed for combat theaters around the world.

However, following the introduction of jets into the U.S. military at the end of World War II, neighborhood complaints about noise multiplied exponentially, punctuated by regular visits to the City Council by the California Heights Improvement Association and the Cerritos Park Association. Though several lawsuits by the groups failed to shutter the airport, the litigation spurred City Hall efforts to seriously address the noise issue.

City officials began to exert political pressure for the full departure of the military from the airport, and City Hall acquired 315 acres of buffer land around the airport (much of which is now Skylinks Golf Course between Lakewood Boulevard and Clark Avenue).

Expansion projects in the 1950s brought the airport to its current physical size and runway configuration, ending with the completion of a final extension to the main 30/12 diagonal runway in 1960.

A 1961 ruling by the Civil Aeronautics Board, in which the agency reversed its own examiner, denied Long Beach co-terminal status with Los Angeles International Airport. The ruling essentially meant that passenger airlines would not be forced to serve both airports, and firmly defined LAX as the premier commercial airport in the region.

In 1966, after Lufthansa began international service out of Long Beach Airport, the city was forced to develop new immigration and customs facilities at the airport. Though the service would not last, it lead in some degree to a $1 million development at the airport that saw the construction of the current control tower on the airport’s south side.

The increasing number of commercial jets also increased the public animus toward the concomitant noise. This rose to a fever pitch in the late 1960s, culminating in an abortive attempt to recall four city council members in 1970.

Amid a dwindling in service at Long Beach during the mid- and late- 1970s, the City Council created the Airport Advisory Task Force (AATF) in 1979, a broad-based grass roots citizens group charged with charting the airport’s future course.

The efforts of the AATF led in part to the city imposing a limit of 15 daily flights (called slots) permitted to fly in or out of the airport. As traffic returned in the early 1980s, the city increased the number of available slots to 18, then to 26 and finally to the current level of 41 slots per day.

The 1980s also saw redevelopment of many of the passenger facilities at the airport. A major face-lift to the 1941 Terminal Building was completed in 1984, in addition to a $2.3 million 7,600-square-foot passenger waiting area and roadway improvements in front of the terminal building. Parking was also addressed in the project, with the construction of a four-story 1,050-space parking structure just east of the terminal building.

Throughout most of the 1990s, the city struggled to keep a steady roster of airlines servicing the airport, with airline after airline starting up Long Beach service only to shutter in very short order.

In August 2001, just two weeks before the September 11 terrorist attacks, JetBlue Airlines started non-stop service from Long Beach Airport to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. Headquartered in Queens, N.Y., the less than two-year-old airline had already become the darling of the airline industry by offering high customer service at low prices.

The airline, consistently rated one of the best in the nation, has steadily increased the number of non-stop flights it offers to and from Long Beach, to include San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, Portland, Seattle, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Austin, Chicago, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Fort Lauderdale.

However, part of the lure in bringing JetBlue to Long Beach were city plans to upgrade the airport’s facilities. In the early 2000s, City Hall moved forward on these plans, but was eventually stymied by lawsuits from the public.

Now in 2009, the lawsuits appear to be nearing completion, with the city emerging victorious and currently only facing an appeal in the last case.

The airport upgrade plans, when completed, will include a new major parking structure which is likely to break ground before the end of the year.

A second component of the city’s plan will add additional buildings to the terminal area, providing additional space and amenities for commuters.

The recent choice by President Barack Obama to land at Long Beach Airport in Air Force One, highlights the conveniences offered by the airport that continue to appeal to so many people: less congestion and a central location in the heart of the Southland.

The Long Beach Airport of tomorrow may not be the airport of today – perhaps better, more comfortable and more convenient – but no matter the final outcome, the city and its airport will always retain a major place in the history of aviation and in the development of the city itself.

Photos courtesy of Long Beach Airport, except where noted.