Early history

Sky Harbor Airport's evocative name was conceived by J. Parker Van Zandt, the owner of Scenic Airways, who purchased 278 acres of farmland for Scenic's winter operations in November 1928. Sky Harbor was not only named but founded and built by Van Zandt in late 1928. He immediately commenced building a 100 x 120 foot airplane hangar and through early 1929 built one runway. This was the fourth airport built in Phoenix. Scenic Airways, lacking funds after the infamous Stock Market Crash of 1929, sold the airport to Acme Investment Company, which owned the airport until 1935, when the city of Phoenix purchased Sky Harbor airport from Acme for $100,000.

Historical airline service

On February 23, 1929, Maddux Air Lines began the airport's first scheduled passenger service with a route between San Francisco and El Paso stopping in Phoenix, Los Angeles, and several other cities; however the service was short-lived, ending by autumn 1929. Standard Air Lines had been serving Phoenix since late 1927 at a different airport and began landing at Sky Harbor on August 5, 1929. Standard operated a route between Los Angeles and El Paso stopping at Phoenix, Tucson, and Douglas, Arizona. Standard was acquired by American Airways in 1930 which later became American Airlines. American extended the route eastward to New York by way of Dallas, Nashville, and many other cities making for a southern transcontinental route across the United States.

TWA began service to San Francisco in 1938 and added Phoenix onto its transcontinental network by 1944 with flights to Los Angeles and eastward to New York stopping at Albuquerque, Kansas City, and many more cities. Arizona Airways began intrastate service within Arizona in 1946 and merged into Frontier Airlines in 1950 which added new routes to Denver, Albuquerque, and El Paso. Bonanza Airlines began service by 1951 with a route to Las Vegas and Reno making several stops at smaller communities. New routes to Salt Lake City and Southern California were added in the 1960s along with nonstop flights to Las Vegas and Reno aboard Douglas DC-9 jets by 1965. Bonanza merged with two other carriers to become Air West in 1968 and was changed to Hughes Airwest in 1970 adding several new routes, including service to Mexico, creating a hub at Phoenix. Hughes Airwest was then merged into Republic Airlines in 1980 which continued the Phoenix hub operation until the mid-1980s. Western Airlines came to Sky Harbor in 1957 with flights to Denver, Los Angeles and San Diego, Continental Airlines came in 1961 to El Paso, Los Angeles, and Tucson, and Delta Air Lines began flights to Dallas by 1969.

Bonanza Air Lines moved its headquarters from Las Vegas to Phoenix in 1966. Bonanza merged with two other airlines to form Air West, which became Hughes Airwest after Howard Hughes bought it in 1970.

After the Airline Deregulation Act was signed in 1978, many new airlines began service to Sky Harbor. In 1978, former Hughes Airwest executive Ed Beauvais formed a plan for a new airline based in Phoenix. He founded America West Airlines in 1981, which began service from Phoenix in 1983 and doubled in size during its first year. Allegheny Airlines and Eastern Airlines soon began service in 1979 followed by United Airlines in 1980. Allegheny changed its name to USAir shortly after beginning service in 1979. Southwest Airlines arrived at Phoenix in January 1982 with 13 daily flights to 12 cities; by 1986 it had 64 daily flights from Phoenix and had a crew base there. Southwest opened a maintenance facility at PHX in 1992, which was its largest.

America West filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1991 and sold its larger aircraft and Japanese route authority, but continued growing its domestic operations from Terminal 4 in cooperation with Continental Airlines. Although AWA enjoyed further growth at Phoenix during the 1990s the aftermath of the September 11 attacks strained its financial position. AWA ended its relationship with Continental and merged with US Airways in 2005. US Airways moved its headquarters to the AWA campus in Tempe and retained many AWA managers to run the merged company. US Airways was then merged into American Airlines in 2015 which continues to build upon the largest hub operation at Phoenix Sky Harbor.

Sky Harbor landed its first transatlantic flights in 1996 when British Airways inaugurated nonstop service to London. The flight was first operated with a Douglas DC-10 aircraft but soon upgraded to a Boeing 747-400.

In May 2025, Starlux Airlines announced they would launch service in 2026 to Taipei, Taiwan, on an Airbus A350 aircraft, marking the first time an airline announced nonstop service to Asia from the airport. On July 25, 2025, China Airlines announced that it will start nonstop flights to Taipei, starting in December of that year.

Facilities expansions and growth

After World War II, the airport began work on a new passenger terminal, as well as a new parallel runway and a diagonal runway. On the February 1953 C&GS diagram runways 8L and 8R are each 6,000 feet (1,800 m) long and runway 3 is 5,500 feet (1,700 m).