Jacksonville International Airport

Jacksonville International Airport, code JAX, is the passenger airport of Jacksonville and Duval County, run by the Jacksonville Aviation Authority along with Craig, Herlong and Cecil airports.

The authority's JAX page describes an airport located just minutes from downtown, with eight major airlines and a network of regional carriers providing some 200 daily arrivals and departures and nonstop flights to major U.S. cities (JAA, Jacksonville International Airport). The same page records 5,601,500 passengers through JAX in 2010.

Traffic has grown well past that. The Jacksonville Aviation Authority's home page reports that more than 7.6 million passengers flew through Jacksonville International Airport in 2024, making it the busiest year ever in the facility's history (Jacksonville Aviation Authority). The Concourse B project record lists the terminal address as 2400 Yankee Clipper Drive, Jacksonville, FL 32218 (Federal Permitting Dashboard).

By the late 1950s Imeson Airport was too small for jet aircraft, so Jacksonville taxpayers approved a $9 million bond issue in 1965 to fund a new airport.

The Jacksonville Aviation Authority's history explains that the faster, heavier jets required longer, paved runways, and that airlines such as Eastern, Delta, National and Southern needed more room as annual passenger figures rose into the hundreds of thousands (JAA, History of Aviation). Imeson, originally named Jacksonville Municipal Airport Number One, was renamed for Thomas Cole Imeson, a city councilman and later commissioner in charge of airports and highways, and served as the city's main airport for 42 years.

The older field had its own history. The JAA history records that Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis to Jacksonville on October 11, 1927 to help dedicate the new municipal airport, and that Eastern Air Transport, later Eastern Airlines, began regular service on January 1, 1931 from a small one-story wooden terminal of 600 square feet. When the new JAX opened, the authority says, it featured plenty of parking, modern jetways and concourses and two main runways.

The Jacksonville Aviation Authority runs JAX, an arrangement that dates to a 2001 split of the old Jacksonville Port Authority into separate airport and seaport bodies.

According to the JAA history, just as construction of the new airport was ending in 1968, management of the city's airports was given to the Jacksonville Port Authority, a decision that was part of an overall consolidation of Jacksonville's government (JAA, History of Aviation). The Port Authority had been created by the Florida Legislature in 1963, and it took over JAX, Craig and Herlong in 1968.

In May 2001 the Florida Legislature approved restructuring the Jacksonville Port Authority into the Jacksonville Airport and Seaport Authorities, effective October 1, 2001, each operating as a local, public and independent authority of Duval County, the JAA history records. The seaport side kept the JAXPORT name and today lists the Blount Island Marine Terminal, the Dames Point Marine Terminal and the Talleyrand Marine Terminal among its Jacksonville cargo facilities (JAXPORT, About).

The authority runs three general aviation airports besides JAX: Jacksonville Executive at Craig, Herlong Recreational and Cecil.

Jacksonville Executive at Craig helps divert general aviation traffic away from JAX and its large commercial planes, and because it sits near residential areas it runs a noise abatement program (JAA, JAXEX at Craig Airport). A 2010 Florida Department of Transportation economic impact study credited the Craig field with over $131 million for the Jacksonville community, according to the authority.

Herlong is the recreational airport in the four-airport system, home to gliders, ultralights, helicopters and skydiving, and won FDOT's General Aviation Airport of the Year award in 2001 (JAA, Herlong Recreational Airport). The authority serves as its fixed base operator and reports more than 75,000 operations in a year.

Cecil, the former Navy field, came to the system in 1999 with more than 6,000 acres and four runways (JAA history). Its 12,500-foot runway is one of the longest in Florida (JAA, Cecil Airport), and in July 2019 the FAA announced a $2 million grant for Cecil Airport in Jacksonville to rehabilitate a runway and install airfield guidance signs (FAA, July 9, 2019).

JAX passed 2 million passengers in 1982, opened a $100 million terminal in 1990 and passed 5 million passengers in 1999, according to the Jacksonville Aviation Authority.

The 1990 terminal also brought a two-level roadway system and a multi-level parking garage, and air cargo carriers moved almost 70 million pounds that year, the JAA history says (JAA, History of Aviation). By 1998 JAX handled more than 100 departures and 100 arrivals daily on 16 airlines, and in 2000 the authority began a terminal expansion program covering parking, landside ticketing and baggage areas, and airside concessions and gates, starting with a 2,400-space garage. Passenger counts for 2010 and 2024 come from the JAX page and the authority's home page (JAX page; JAA home page).

Photographs of the rebuild survive in the University of North Florida's Lawrence V. Smith collection, which dates its images of construction at Jacksonville International Airport to circa 1981 to 1991 (UNF Digital Commons).

Concourse B is a replacement concourse at JAX with six new gates and about 170,000 square feet, whose federal environmental review and permitting were completed on May 10, 2024.

The Federal Permitting Dashboard lists the Federal Aviation Administration as lead agency and the Jacksonville Aviation Authority as sponsor (Federal Permitting Dashboard). It describes construction and operation of a replacement Concourse B and associated ramp area plus the relocation of Taxiway V, with up to three levels, new holdrooms, concession space, restrooms and a connecting corridor with moving sidewalks. The project would bring the JAX terminal back to three concourses, like the original terminal layout, at an estimated project cost of $300,000,000.

Financing is under way. The authority's home page announces that its $230 million bond issue for Concourse B construction received ratings of A1, A and AA from Moody's Ratings, S&P Global Ratings and Kroll Bond Rating Agency (Jacksonville Aviation Authority). Neither the dashboard nor the JAA pages fetched for this guide give an opening date for the new Jacksonville concourse, so none is stated here.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by rereading the Jacksonville Aviation Authority home page and its history, JAX, Craig, Herlong and Cecil pages, the Federal Permitting Dashboard entry for Concourse B, the FAA's July 2019 grant release, the JAXPORT about page and the UNF Lawrence V. Smith collection record.