[12] He moved and established a private airport on an 80-acre tract at the corner of Admiral Place and Sheridan Avenue.

He had been persuaded to visit Tulsa by William G. Skelly, who was then president of the local Chamber of Commerce, as well as a booster of the young aviation industry.

[16] Using this vehicle, Skelly obtained signatures from several prominent Tulsa businessmen who put up $172,000 to buy 390 acres (160 hectares) for a municipal airport.

Later it would also build a low-wing cabin monoplane as a corporate aircraft, and the NP-1, a naval training plane used in World War II.

The Air Corps supplied students with training aircraft, flying clothes, textbooks, and equipment.

Spartan furnished instructors, training sites and facilities, aircraft maintenance, quarters, and mess halls.

[24] The 138th Fighter Wing of the Air National Guard was organized at the Tulsa Airport in 1940 as the 125th Observation Squadron, then renamed when it deployed overseas during World War II.

The plant was operated by Douglas Aircraft Corporation to manufacture, assemble and modify bombers for the USAAF from 1942 to 1945; production was suspended when World War II ended.

[13] In 1946 American Airlines acquired two former Air Force hangars to start a maintenance and engineering base at Tulsa Municipal Airport.

[27] The April 1957 OAG shows 20 weekday departures on American, 18 Braniff, 6 Continental, 6 Central and 4 TWA.

(In 1947, when transcon flights made at least one stop, American had nonstops from Tulsa to San Francisco and Los Angeles.)

TAIT has no authority to levy taxes and depends on airport revenues to repay airport-related debts.

In July 1989, a lease amendment gave daily airport operation and maintenance responsibility to the TAA.

[29]: 13 The Tulsa Air and Space Museum (TASM) was established in 1998 on the northwest side of the airport.

3 for $30 million, which was loaned to Great Plains, and TAIT agreed to purchase the property if the airline defaulted.

[31] Great Plains went bankrupt in January 2004 and was unable to repay $7.1 million of the loan, but the loan guarantee was deemed to violate Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) policies prohibiting an airport authority from subsidizing a particular airline, and when the Bank of Oklahoma tried in June 2004 to collect the debt, TAIT declined to purchase the property from the TIA.

The TIA promptly sued TAIT for violating the agreement and later added the city of Tulsa to the lawsuit in June 2008.

The parties tried to settle the suit in August 2008 by repaying the TIA with $7.1 million of city funds, but this was challenged by a taxpayer group in a qui tam action, and the settlement was deemed illegal in October 2011 by the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

The dispute was finally settled on 31 August 2015 with TAIT agreeing to pay $1.56 million to the TIA and the Bank of Oklahoma's parent company and $125,000 to the Tulsa Regional Chamber.

Frontier Airlines returned once again in 2018 after pulling out of TUL a decade prior and began year-round service to Denver International Airport.

American Airlines reunited year-round service to Los Angeles in April 2019 after the route was cut in the late 2000s.

The first began with American Airlines adding nonstop service to Phoenix Sky Harbor in November 2020 to attract leisure travel, this route was very successful, therefore, the route turned into a year-round service just a few months after flights began.

American Airlines began a surge at Tulsa International Airport adding four new destinations within one year, nearly doubling their network with new services to Austin, Miami, New York–LaGuardia, and Washington–National.

Allegiant Air also attempted service to Austin but was unsuccessful as the route was discontinued a little over a month after beginning.

Breeze Airways launched non-stop service to Nashville in June 2022 and will add Orlando in March 2023.

[33] Concourse B (home to Southwest and United) underwent a $17.9 million renovation between September 7, 2010[34] and January 18, 2012,[35] including major HVAC replacement along with the more noticeable design changes.

[38] AA received $22 million in funding from Tulsa's Vision 2025 program that helped it buy machines, tooling and test equipment that only original-equipment manufacturers previously had.

[44] The HP Enterprise Services (formerly EDS) building hosting some of Sabre's datacenter servers is located at the Tulsa Airport.

[45] In front of this building is a 6-foot sculptured penguin, given to the company as part of a local art campaign by the Tulsa Zoo.

This article incorporates public domain material from the Air Force Historical Research Agency