Designed to reflect Wichita’s aviation-rich history and prominence in the industry, the new state-of-the-art terminal has two levels and features 12 gates. As part of the building design, there are special public art and exhibits that document the city’s aviation tradition — which has always had a decidedly Shocker bent.
From Bill Snook ’21, who put his Fairmount College degree to use at, first, the E.M. Laird Co., which built the Laird Swallow, the first specifically commercial airplane ever built in Wichita, and then as factory manager at Travel Air, credited with creating the first aircraft assembly line; to Walter Innes fs ’24, who helped found Travel Air (motto: “Large or Small, We Lead Them All”) in 1925 with Walter Beech, Clyde Cessna and Lloyd Stearman; to Dwane Wallace ’33, a University of Wichita graduate of the new (1928) aeronautical engineering program who stepped up to reopen his uncle Clyde Cessna’s plant and went on to oversee the company’s rise to become the world’s largest manufacturer of general aviation aircraft — there are Shockers interwoven throughout Wichita’s aviation legacy.
