In the early 20th century, the location hosted agricultural fields. On Dec. 31, 1910, daredevil aviator John Moisant, died in 1910 in an airplane accident when he was thrown from his plane. The area was shortly after converted to a stockyard and was named Moisant Stock Yards after him. The airport's IATA code, MSY, is derived from this name. Plans for a new airport began in 1940, as evidence mounted that the older New Orleans Lakefront Airport was too small. It was originally named Moisant Field. In World War II the land became a government air base. It returned to civil control after the war and commercial service commenced in May 1946. When commercial service began at Moisant Field in 1946, the terminal occupied a large, makeshift hangar-like building. In September 1947, the airport was shut down as it was submerged under two feet of water in the wake of the 1947 Fort Lauderdale Hurricane's impact. A new terminal complex debuted in 1959 towards the end of Mayor DeLesseps "Chep" Morrison's administration. This structure, greatly expanded in the 1970s and the recipient of two rebuilt concourses in the 1990s and 2000s, comprised the passenger terminal until its replacement in November 2019. The former terminal contained two sections, East and West, connected by a central ticketing alley and baggage claim. Four concourses, A, B, C and D, were attached to the terminal, which eventually grew to a total of 47 gates. The vaulted arrivals lounge at the head of Concourse C and the adjacent, western half of the ticketing alley are the remaining portions of the airport's 1959 terminal complex. Retired United States Air Force Major General Junius Wallace Jones served as airport director in the 1950s. During his term, a period of rapid change in civil aviation, the airport received many improvements. By the time the airport's 1959 terminal building opened, the name Moisant International Airport was being used for the New Orleans facility. In 1961, the name was changed to New Orleans International Airport. The airport's mid-1970s expansion included a lengthened main terminal ticketing area, an airport access road linking the terminal to Interstate 10, and the construction of Concourses A and B. The two original 1959 concourses were renamed Concourse C and Concourse D, with the latter receiving a four-gate addition at its terminus, designed to accommodate widebody aircraft. In July 1978, National Airlines began flights to Amsterdam with continuing same-plane service to Frankfurt utilizing widebody McDonnell Douglas DC-10s. This was New Orleans' first nonstop transatlantic flight. Less than a month later, National added a stop in Tampa due to low demand. In May 1981, British Airways inaugurated a flight from London's Gatwick Airport to Mexico City that stopped in New Orleans. It flew a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar on the route. The airline, then government-owned, discontinued the service in October 1982 because of its deepening financial problems. Northeastern International Airways operated a small hub at MSY in the spring of 1984. Another airline that attempted to operate a hub at MSY was short-lived Pride Air which was based in New Orleans and was operating nonstop or direct Boeing 727 service from the airport to sixteen destinations, including cities in California, Florida, and the western U.S., in the summer of 1985. In July 2001, to honor the 100th anniversary of Louis Armstrong's birth (August 4, 1901), the airport's name became Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. MSY reopened to commercial flights on September 13, 2005, after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina the previous month, with four flights operated by Delta Air Lines to Atlanta and a Northwest Airlines flight to Memphis. Slowly, service from other carriers began to resume. All international service into MSY remained suspended while the FIS facility was closed post-Katrina.