FeelThere has recently released their rendition of Nashville International Airport (KBNA) for Microsoft Flight Simulator, serving the Nashville Metropolitan Area with a yearly average of 18 million passengers.

Opened in June 1937, passenger service started a month later with American Airlines and Eastern Air Lines. It originally featured three runways, a three-story passenger terminal, a control tower, two hangars, and a beacon. The yearly figures hit nearly 190,000 passengers.

It was used as the headquarters for the 4th Ferrying Command during World War 2, ferrying aircraft to Europe at the height of the war. The ferrying operations demanded a lot of space, which implied an expansion to 1,500 acres of total area. 

Nearly a decade later, the City Aviation Department made plans to modernize and expand the airport, with a new terminal, runway expansion, and a new crosswind runway to come in 1961.

As a curiosity, Nashville Intl. was the first municipal airport in the United States with a public reading room. 

It has seen a lot of expansion work over the following years, with its peak in the late 1980s, when American Airlines made a hub in Nashville and attracted many companies to the city, such as Nissan and Saturn Corporation. The hub eventually closed in 1995, when American couldn’t afford to lose any more money (it wasn’t profitable even during its heyday). 

The airport has been recently modernized, with operations starting in 2006 and reaching its conclusion five years later, expanding the ticketing and check-in areas, renovating and constructing new bathrooms, and bringing the total size of the terminal to 1 million square feet. In 2021, the operator made a plan called “New Horizon” to further improve the airport, at the cost of 1.5 billion USD. Construction is set to begin in 2023 and reach completion in late 2028.

The scenery features an accurate rendition of the airport, with over a hundred custom-modeled buildings, taxi bridges, custom night lighting, custom jetways, and custom ground polygon. 

It’s available on SimMarket and on FeelThere’s Shop for $21.39/$19.99 (respectively), requiring at least 609 MB of free disk space to install.

Stay tuned to Threshold for more flight simulation news!

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