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Super Bowl Traffic Goes Smoothly

** Citation Citations stacked up at Greenwood
Municipal Airport**
Steve Schapiro
Gemini Sparkle

Key Takeaways:

  • Super Bowl XLVI set a new record for private aircraft attendance, with over 1,100 planes making parking reservations in Indianapolis, not including "quick turn" operations.
  • Local airports, including Indianapolis International, maxed out capacity, requiring measures like closing a runway for parking and utilizing multiple reliever airports such as Indy Executive, Metro, and Eagle Creek Airpark.
  • Temporary control towers were established at three airports to manage the high volume of air traffic efficiently, though post-game departures, particularly at Indy International, experienced significant taxi delays.
  • The event highlighted the complex logistical challenges of managing air traffic for major events, foreshadowing even greater efforts needed for future Super Bowls in cities with fewer airport resources.
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Even before the opening kickoff on Sunday night, Super Bowl XLVI smashed one record – the number of private aircraft flying to the game. More than 1,100 private aircraft had parking reservations at area airports for the weekend, according to the Indiana Department of Transportation Aviation Division. And that number doesn’t include the hundreds of aircraft that did “quick turns” – dropping passengers off and returning after the game to pick them up.

Indianapolis International Airport maxed out its capacity with 350 aircraft parking at Signature Flight Service and another 400 at Million Air. Runway 14/32 on the north side of the field was closed to provide additional parking for the Gulfstreams, Globals, Challengers, Falcons, Citations and Learjets that came in.

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