New Orleans Lakefront Airport: The End of an Era

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In the 1930s Shushan Airport was one of the most advanced airports in the country. During the airport's heyday, the Orleans Levee Board extended the airports' runways numerous times to accommodate the newer and increasingly larger passenger planes, but this growth and success soon came to an end.

The success of Shushan Airport were due in large part to the work of a few key individuals, all of whom were incapacitated soon after the airport's opening. Between 1935 and 1936, the founders of Wedell and Williams Air Service died in plane crashes. In 1935, Huey P. Long was assassinated. In 1941, after years of corruption scandals, the Louisiana Supreme Court convicted Abe Shushan of wire fraud. 

In order to distance the airport from association with Shushan's political scandals, authorities renamed Shushan Airport the New Orleans Lakefront Airport.

Following World War II, the airport lost commercial flights to Moisant Field (now Louis Armstrong International Airport), but it continues to handle personal and company flights, flight schools, and some military flights.