In addition, in 1968, Cleveland Hopkins was the first U.S. airport to be directly connected to a local or regional transit system. (2015).
There are currently three runways at Cleveland Hopkins Airport: Runway 6R/24L, which is 9,055 by 150 feet, Runway 6L/24R, which is 9,000 by 150 feet, and Runway 10/28, which is the smallest runway at 6,017 by 150 feet. Runway 10/28 is also the only runway that is made up of both asphalt and concrete. In the past, there was another parallel runway, formerly 6C/24C, but it was decommissioned, narrowed, and converted into taxiway C. This particular taxiway is inscribed with the word "TAXI" in large, yellow letters, so incoming aircraft do not mistake it for a runway. (Mitchell, 2015) .
The first flights out of the Cleveland Municipal Airport were mail-carrying routes for the U.S. Air Mail Service. These flights began all the way back in 1919, but the mail planes were landing in a section of the Woodland Hills Park near East 93rd street and Kinsman Road. This was much too small of an airfield, and motivated the city to develop a new municipal airport. This new airfield would become what we know today as Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. (2015) The first flights out of the new location were by Henry Ford's commercial airmail service, which was the nations first air-mail service. The first flights would be between Cleveland and Detroit. These commercial flights would also carry passengers, but this was reserved for a small amount of very wealthy travelers, because being a passenger on a commercial aircraft was expensive. (2015).
The number of aircraft using the Cleveland Municipal Airport jumped from a few thousand in its first year of operation to almost 20,000 by 1929 (Rotman, 2015). Currently Cleveland Hopkins has over 100,000 flights per year. Throughout the airport's long history, there has never been a fatal crash on any of the runways.
