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The Airports · Bendix Field to South Bend International
South Bend has had one airport for almost its whole flying life, but it has had it in two places. The first ground was northeast of the city, a municipal turf field the federal airway bulletins were already listing in 1929, which spent the Second World War as Cadet Field and closed in the 1950s under what is now a Granger neighborhood. The second ground — the airport the city still flies from — was a brake manufacturer's answer to the first field's distance: in 1929 Vincent Bendix bought 610 acres northwest of the city, and Bendix Municipal Airport opened there in 1933 with a dirt runway and a chalkboard for a flight log. The county bought the field in the Depression, the airlines came and went with the regulated era and the hub era, the jets arrived in 1967, and the name over the terminal changed five times before settling, on 23 April 2014, on South Bend International Airport — a name the airport then spent three years making literal with a customs station. What follows is the ground, the names, the airlines, and the flying, in the order the record gives them.
The first flight: René Simon, 10 September 1911
10 September 1911
The county's flying age opened as a show: On 10 September 1911 the French aviator René Simon, touring America with the Moisant International Aviators exhibition company, flew a Blériot monoplane from a field near the southeast…
The first airport: the municipal field northeast of the city
By 1929 — closed by 1960
South Bend's first airport was not the airport: Before Bendix Field existed, the city's air terminal stood six miles northeast of downtown, north of State Road 23 and west of Fir Road, on ground now covered by a Granger…
Bendix Field: the purchase of 1929 and the opening of 1933
1929 — 1933
The airport began as a manufacturer's land purchase: In 1929 Vincent Bendix, founder of the Bendix Aviation Corporation, purchased 610 acres northwest of South Bend to give the city air service closer in than the northeast field.…
The county buys the field, 1936–1938
July 1936 — 1938
The Depression made the airport public: In July 1936 St. Joseph County voted to buy Bendix Field from the Bendix interests on a $210,000 bond issue, and the purchase was completed in 1937, making Bendix Field the first publicly…
Airmail: the transcontinental airway over the bend
1927 — 1930s
The mail route came before the airport did: South Bend sat on the federal airmail's main street almost from the start of contract flying. Contract Air Mail route CAM-17, flown by National Air Transport, was awarded on 2 April…
The war years: training at both fields, and the base that went elsewhere
1940 — 1945
South Bend bid for a base and got a training program: In 1940, as the Army Air Corps looked for Midwestern bases, South Bend and Fort Wayne lobbied for the same prize, and Fort Wayne won it. The Tribune's aviation column "Airfax"…
Amelia Earhart, 1936: the famous landing the record supports
1936
The airport authority's own history records the visit: "Amelia Earhart in 1936 when she landed her Lockheed Electra aircraft at Bendix field" — the sentence stands on the St. Joseph County Airport Authority's history page, and…
The regulated era: four carriers on the April 1957 timetable
April 1957
The fullest early snapshot of airline South Bend is a timetable: The Official Airline Guide for April 1957 shows four carriers working the field — North Central Airlines with ten weekday departures, United with nine, Lake Central…
The ground grows: runways, 1950s to the $105 million rebuild
1950s — September 2025
The field under the airport changed as the airplanes did: Until the 1980s Bendix Field worked four runways. In the 1950s the east–west runway 9 was 5,000 feet, runways 6 and 12 were 4,000 feet each — their lines survive as…
First jets: United's Caravelles, January 1967
January 1967
Jets reached the bend on a milk run: In January 1967 United Air Lines began flying Sud Aviation Caravelles through South Bend on the route Chicago O'Hare–South Bend–Fort Wayne–Newark and back — French-built twinjets on a…
The St. Joseph County Airport Authority
1973 — present
Since the 1970s the airport has been run by its own authority: The St. Joseph County Airport Authority is a municipal corporation and a component unit of St. Joseph County, governed by a four-member bipartisan board appointed by…
The name line: six names over one field
1933 — 2014
The airport has been renamed five times, and each name dates: It opened in 1933 as Bendix Municipal Airport , and flew as Bendix Field through the county purchase into the county era, when it became the St. Joseph County Airport…
"International": the customs build, 2014–2019
23 April 2014 — 16 July 2019
The word was a promise first and a facility second: When the Airport Authority announced the name South Bend International Airport on 23 April 2014, it paired the name with a project: about $3 million, from federal, state, and…
The terminal line: 1949, 1981, and the present concourse
1949 — present
Three buildings, one address: The airport's first real terminal was a 1949 building designed for 25,000 passengers a year; by the end of its life it was accommodating about 400,000. Its replacement was planned early — a 1975…
The trains at the terminal: the South Shore's airport station
20–21 November 1992 — present
The railroad reached the airport in November 1992: The South Shore Line's airport station was dedicated on 20 November 1992 and the line's terminus moved to the airport on 21 November 1992 — the station record and the line record…
The numbers: enplanements, peaks, and the 2025 record
2000 — 2025
The federal passenger series tells the airport's modern story in one column: Boardings (enplanements) at South Bend, from the Federal Aviation Administration's passenger boarding data, ran 432,439 in 2000 — the high-water mark of…
What the hub era left, and the 2018 map
2001 — June 2018
Deregulation's map redrew itself at South Bend the way it did everywhere: The 1957 page's four carriers became, by succession, Republic and then Northwest on the northern routes, US Airways on the Pittsburgh line that Lake…
The route map as verified, November 2026
November 2026
As of November 2026, five airlines fly from South Bend, and the map states its date: United Express flies Chicago–O'Hare — increased to seven daily roundtrips on 2 September 2025 and to eight daily from 1 October 2025 — and…
Second lives: cargo, maintenance, and the working field
Present day, stated as of 2026
The airport's other economy runs at night and in the hangars: FedEx Express flies South Bend to Memphis, with FedEx Feeder service by CSA Air to Indianapolis; air cargo through the field ran 19.2 million pounds in 2024. For one…
Air shows: from Simon's exhibition to Skyfest Michiana
1911 — present
The exhibition tradition is as old as the flying: South Bend's first air show was its first flight — Simon's 1911 exhibition before 30,000 people, told at the head of this section. The documented modern edition is Skyfest…
Accidents: the NTSB record
2011 — 2023
The field's fatal record is two general-aviation accidents, and both are printed whole: On 4 April 2011 a rented Cirrus SR22, in from Chicago Executive Airport, caught a gust on approach, struck its left wing, and cartwheeled 250…
The Bendix Field ballpark question
1943 — 1945
One question from the Sports section is answered here at the size the airport record supports — which is to say, it is not settled: The South Bend Blue Sox of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League played their first…
The small fields around the county
1934 — present
The big field was never the only ground: Two of the county's small fields belong to Mishawaka's own later history and are printed here as boundary lines only. Mishawaka Airport opened on Labor Day 1934 at Dragoon Trail and Elm…