Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport Guide

Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport sits approximately 11 km south of downtown Louisville, Kentucky, serving a metro area of over 1.3 million people. The airport opened for commercial operations on November 15, 1947, replacing Bowman Field as Louisville's primary civil aviation hub. In 2024, it handled over 4.8 million passengers across 24 gates in the Jerry E. Abramson Terminal.

SDF is one of the largest cargo airports in the world. UPS Airlines began operations here in 1981 and now runs its global air hub — Worldport — a 5.2 million square foot facility on airport grounds. This makes Louisville the sixth-busiest cargo airport worldwide and third-busiest in the United States, processing nearly 7.5 billion pounds of cargo annually.

The airport is operated by the Louisville Regional Airport Authority and is in the midst of a $1 billion capital improvement program, SDF Next, launched in 2019. Eight airlines served 41 nonstop destinations across the U.S. in 2025, with the airport recording its third-busiest passenger year on record.