In 1989 mayor Coleman A. Young abandoned a plan to expand the airport's runway because the adjoining Gethsemane Cemetery blocked the way, and surviving relatives protested. A few years later Southwest Airlines ended operations there, citing the city's inability to keep its promises and the need for longer runways to allow for larger jets. in 1988, complaints were registered because the city removed/discarded several families' memorial statuary without notification, replacing them with simple flat in-ground markers, stating that the statues posed a collision risk should an airplane go off the end of the runway.