Planning and construction

Prior to the opening of the airport, the Southwest Florida region was served by Page Field in Fort Myers. By the 1970s, however, Page Field clearly had become too small to handle increasing future demand for commercial flights into the region. Expanding Page Field was determined to be impractical because its airfield was constrained by U.S. 41 to the west and expanding the airfield to the east would require bridging the Ten Mile Canal and relocating a railroad track.

A number of sites were considered for a new regional airport, including southern Charlotte County, Estero, and northeast Cape Coral near Burnt Store Marina. The government of Lee County ultimately selected a site near the end of Daniels Parkway that was a dirt road at the time. An advantage to this location was its proximity to Interstate 75, which was under construction and would have an interchange with Daniels Parkway, providing easy access (Interstate 75 was opened to traffic through Fort Myers in 1979).

Construction of Southwest Florida airport began in 1980, and the airport opened on schedule on May 14, 1983. Upon opening, the airport was named Southwest Florida Regional Airport (the airport code RSW is short for "Regional South-West"). Originally, the airport included a single 8400-ft runway and a passenger terminal with 14 gates on two concourses. The original passenger terminal was located on the north side of the runway at the end of Chamberlin Parkway.

Opening and early years

When the airport opened in 1983, Southwest Florida Regional Airport was served by Air Florida Commuter (operated by Finair Express), Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Eastern Air Lines, Northwest Orient Airlines, Ozark Air Lines, Pan Am, Republic Airlines, and United Airlines. Delta Air Lines operated the first flight. By 1985, American Airlines, People Express, Provincetown-Boston Airlines, Southern Express, and USAir were also serving the airport.

In 1986, American Trans Air (later known as ATA) began service to Fort Myers with flights to Indianapolis International Airport, which was the first scheduled service for that airline.

The airport received its first international flight in February 1984 with a direct flight from Toronto operated by Wardair Canada. With increasing demand for international service, a small U.S. Customs facility was built within the original terminal on the lower level of Concourse B.

The airport was renamed Southwest Florida International Airport on May 14, 1993, which was its 10th anniversary. The name change coincided with an expansion of the terminal, which included a 55,000-square-foot Federal Inspection facility to replace the first facility. The larger facility opened in 1994 and was connected to the original terminal's Concourse A. The runway was also lengthened to 12,000 ft (3,658 m) at the same time to better accommodate international service (making it the fourth-longest runway in Florida).

In 1988, the airport exceeded its annual capacity of 3 million passengers; by 2004, the airport was serving nearly 7 million passengers annually. In 1998, the original terminal was expanded with a new wing added to Concourse B that included three additional gates, bringing the total to 17.

In April 1994, LTU International introduced a Munich–Düsseldorf–Fort Myers–Miami–Düsseldorf–Munich route. This was Fort Myers' first flight to Europe. It came in response to rising tourism from Germany, which Lee County had spent the past several years cultivating. The county considered Germany a natural market to target, given the sizable German-American community that lived in Southwest Florida and maintained ties with its country of origin.

Midfield terminal

With the original terminal operating at more than double its intended capacity, construction of the current midfield terminal began in February 2002. The $438 million terminal opened on September 9, 2005. The terminal has three concourses and 28 gates. Demolition of the original terminal north of the airfield was completed in spring 2006. The original terminal's parking lot still stands at the end of Chamberlin Parkway. The former terminal's ramp, now known as North Ramp, is now primarily used as a base for Western Global Airlines, an Estero-based cargo airline.

Recent history

In early 2015, Terminal Access Road, the airport's main entrance road, was extended past Treeline Avenue to connect directly to Interstate 75, allowing airport-related traffic to avoid local streets. The airport can now be accessed directly from the freeway at Exit 128. Terminal Access Road was then expanded to six lanes in late 2016.

Air Berlin, which had bought LTU, ceased service to Düsseldorf in October 2017. The following May, Eurowings began routes to Düsseldorf, Munich, and Cologne using Airbus A330s. The carrier subsequently dropped the flights to Munich and Cologne. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the company suspended its link to Düsseldorf in March 2020. Eurowings Discover launched a route to Frankfurt in March 2022.