Stapleton International Airport Stapleton International Airport Stapleton International Airport was the primary airport serving Denver, Colorado, United States from 1929 to 1995. At different times it served as a hub for Continental Airlines, the original Frontier Airlines, People Express, Trans World Airlines (TWA), United Airlines and Western Airlines. Other airlines with smaller hub operations at Stapleton included Aspen Airways, the current version of Frontier Airlines and Rocky Mountain Airways, with all three of these air carriers being based in Denver at the time. In 1995, Stapleton was replaced by Denver International Airport. It has since been decommissioned and the property redeveloped as a
Denver International Airport away than Stapleton International Airport, the airport it replaced. The distant location was chosen to avoid aircraft noise affecting developed areas, to accommodate a generous runway layout that would not be compromised by blizzards, and to allow for future expansion. The 52.4 square miles (136 km) of land occupied by the airport is more than one and a half times the size of Manhattan (33.6 sq mi or 87 km2). At 33,531 acres (136 km), DIA is by far the largest land area commercial airport in the United States. Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport is a distant second at 70 km