Thank you for another great flashback!
DET was Detroit's primary airline airport from the time it opened in 1931 until the end of World War II. However, DET was just as controversial in the 1930s as it was when WN served it. Until the mid 1960s, there was a 200 foot high natural gas storage tank located very close to DET's main runway. The presence of the tank caused minimums at DET to be higher than at many other airports, which, in turn, caused many flights to divert to DTW, which had no airline service at the time. At one point in the 1930s, AA had to set up a full fledged ground handling operation at DTW, to handle all of the diversions from DET!
I visited DET several times when Pro Air was based there, and in many ways, it felt like WN had never left, because the brown / orange chairs WN had purchased for their gate areas were still being used by Pro Air.
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