Indianapolis International Airport (IND) is a civilian airport serving central Indiana. It is located about 8 miles south-west of Indianapolis, just off I-465 and I-70 at coordinates 39°43'3"N, 86°17'40"W and 242 m (797 ft) above sea level. The airport is one of six facilities under the jurisdiction of the Indianapolis Airport Authority.
The facility was opened in 1931 and was named Weir Cook Municipal Airport after Indiana's first WWI ace, Captain Harvey Weir Cook in 1944, after the aviator was shot down over the Pacific in WWII. It kept that name until 1976, when its administrators decided that they wanted something more formal and international-like. IND has been operating as Indianapolis International since then. In 2007 suggestions were made to change the name back to Weir Cook. IND is notable for two firsts in airport technology: installing the first civilian airport radar in 1946 and the first airport computer in 1958. It has three runways: main ones 5L/23R at 3414 m (11200 ft) and 5R/23L at 3048 m (10000 ft), plus a 2318 m (7605 ft) crosswind runway at 14/32.
Navigating the airport as it is now is fairly easy, and its location is excellent for a large metropolitan airport. Pick-up and drop-off are manageable. Parking charges are average by airport standards. The airport offers a 30-minute grace period for quick pick-up and drop-off in the short-term garage. Should you be foolish enough to use the cheaper-looking surface parking lot instead, it will cost you a minimum of $4. Concessions are more approachable than they are in many other airports since many of the shops are outside the secure terminal areas, making this a better-than-average airport for seeing off people and worse-than-average for transiting. In other ways it's rather dated and provincial and lacks modern amenities like automated walkways and such. On the other hand, IND is one of only a handful of airports with a USO office. There used to be one designated smoking room but that fell victim to Indianapolis's city-wide anti-smoking hysteria in 2008.
Future plans involve building a new terminal between the two main runways on a field that was reserved for that purpose when the second runway was built back in 1975. The new billion-dollar terminal is expected to open late in 2008 and will replace the old one that dates back to 1957 and had additions made in 1968 and 1987. A third parallel runway is also in the plans. I-70 was recently realigned with a possible taxiway overpass in mind since the new runway would be on the other (south) side of the highway. Access to the new terminal will eventually be from the south, through I-70 west of I-465, rather than from the east through I-465 north of I-70 as it is now.
Airlines serving IND are Air Canada, AirTran, American Airlines, Cape Air, Continental Airlines,
Delta Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Midwest Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Southwest Airlines, United
Airlines, and US Airways for a total of 39 direct destinations. AirTran and Northwest use IND as a focus
city; for the remainder it's just a spoke destination. As far as international traffic goes, IND is overshadowed by O'Hare in Chicago. It's "international" by virtue of having flights to Toronto and Cancun. IND serves about 8.5 million passengers annually and handles over a million tons of cargo, mostly in its capacity as a FedEx hub.
Indy airport primarily serves central Indiana. It's not really a viable option for anyone further afield as
tickets, particularly international tickets, to other major airports in the region, including Chicago Midway and O'Hare, St. Louis, and
Cincinnati, tend to be a bit cheaper. Its ease of access however, is worth money to the comfort-seeking or time-conscious traveller so, if you're going to some place nearer Indy than Chicago, you can avoid nightmares like the Dan Ryan Expressway and the assorted toll roads, which would quite possible cost you more time and money than you would save by flying into Chicago.
More airport and flight information: http://www.indianapolisairport.com/ | 
