Since 1924, the largest airport in Wichita has had three major terminals, including moving its location from the southeast to the southwest side of the city. In October 1924, Wichita hosted more than 100,000 people for the National Air Congress. City planners used the event to raise funds for a proposed Wichita Municipal Airport. The event was a success, and the city held ground-breaking ceremonies for the airport on June 28, 1929. The airport was then about 6 miles (10 km) southeast of the older Wichita city limits. Wichita Municipal Airport was officially dedicated on March 31, 1935. In August 1941, during World War II, the Kansas National Guard 127th Observation Squadron was activated as the first military unit assigned to the Wichita airport. By the summer of 1950, Boeing was ready to turn out the first production B-47 Stratojets, and the United States Air Force sought to make Wichita Airport a permanent military installation. Public hearings began to consider locating an Air Force base near the Wichita Boeing facilities, and the city of Wichita received $9.4 million to build a new municipal airfield. On May 31, 1951, the USAF took title to the airport. Civil and military flights shared the airport until the city completed a new airport in October 1954. The Wichita Municipal Airport was renamed Wichita Air Force Base, then renamed again to its current name of McConnell Air Force Base. Wichita eventually acquired the original terminal in 1980. In the late 1980s, volunteers entered the building with wheelbarrows and shovels and began the arduous cleaning task. The building was named the Kansas Aviation Museum and opened on April 19, 1991, to showcase Kansas aviation history. In 1951, the United States Air Force brought proceedings to condemn and acquire the Wichita Municipal Airport for what was to become McConnell Air Force Base. Wichita's park board quickly acquired 1,923 acres (778 ha) of land in southwest Wichita, and the construction of a new "Wichita Municipal Airport" took about three and a half years. The airport opened to general aviation traffic in 1953, and airline flights moved to the new airport on April 1, 1954. The new airport was dedicated on October 31, 1954, with two runways. It became Wichita Mid-Continent Airport in 1973 after Kansas City renamed its Mid-Continent Airport to Kansas City International Airport. The airport's ICT designation is an abbreviation for Wichita. At the time, the FCC prohibited airport codes starting with "K" or "W," which were the standard starting letters for radio stations in the United States, by international treaty. Naming conventions of the time then called for the airport to use the second letter of the city and then used any phonetics to make it easier to identify. Similarly, Kansas City could not get a KCI designation when it renamed its Mid-Continent International Airport to Kansas City International Airport in 1972 (so Kansas City still has MCI as its designation). IATA is reluctant to change designations once they appear on maps. The April 1957 Official Airline Guide shows 11 weekday departures on Braniff, 10 TWA, 4 Continental, 3 Central, and 2 Ozark. Nonstop flights did not reach beyond Denver, Amarillo, Oklahoma City, and Kansas City. In 1964, TWA had the first scheduled jet flights. The airport built two concourses attached to the terminal building with 10 gates in 1976. The airport renovated the ticketing areas and added two gates in 1985. The airport completed a $6 million renovation of the terminal in 1989. Since 1991 the airfield has also hosted the Bombardier Aerospace Flight Test Centre (BFTC, former Learjet facility). The Old Terminal had two concourses, East and West, each with six gates. The Old Terminal closed permanently on June 2, 2015, and was later demolished.