What it means
Mesa Gateway is the Valley’s second commercial airport, out in the far southeast corner of Mesa, and in Scottsdale the word usually comes up in one sentence: “The flight’s cheaper into Gateway, but…” The airport is the low-cost-carrier field, dominated by Allegiant, which flies to dozens of mid-sized cities that have no nonstop to Sky Harbor. Locals call it Gateway, Mesa Gateway, or, out of habit, Phoenix-Mesa Gateway, the name it carried from 2008 until the end of 2024.
For a Scottsdale trip the trade is simple. Gateway can save real money on the fare and costs it back in distance, since the airport sits in the East Valley much farther from Old Town than Sky Harbor is. The airport-to-Scottsdale guide has a section on exactly that math, and the verdict there holds: worth it for a family with a rental car and a week, rarely for a weekend.
Where you’ll meet it
On fare-search results that list AZA beside PHX; in the tournament-weekend guide for teams playing in the southeast Valley; on the Loop 202 signs for the Santan Freeway; and in any conversation about an Allegiant fare.
Where the word came from
The airport is a recycled air base, and each of its names marks a stage. Construction began in July 1941 on what the Army first called Mesa Military Airport, renamed Higley Field that October. In February 1942 it became Williams Field, honoring 1st Lt. Charles Linton Williams (1898 to 1927), an Arizona-born Army pilot killed in a crash in Hawaii. As Williams Air Force Base it became the Air Force’s leading pilot-training base, credited with supplying a quarter of its pilots, until the 1991 base-closure commission put it on the list. The base closed on September 30, 1993.
It reopened in 1994 as Williams Gateway Airport, the “Gateway” signalling the plan: a civilian airport and an education and business campus, now anchored by ASU’s Polytechnic campus, on the old base. Allegiant began scheduled flights in October 2007, and in 2008 the airport took the name Phoenix-Mesa Gateway. Phoenix was a member of the airport authority for years. When it withdrew, the board voted on December 17, 2024 to rename the place Mesa Gateway Airport. The remaining members are Mesa, Gilbert, Queen Creek, Apache Junction and the Gila River Indian Community.
So “Gateway” has survived three name changes, and it is the word that sticks. The site’s own guides still say Phoenix-Mesa Gateway in places; it is the same airport.
What it is not
It is not a Phoenix airport, despite the old name, and not an alternative terminal of Sky Harbor; there is no shuttle between the two. Nor is it the Scottsdale Airport, the business-jet field in the north. And the “Gateway” is not the Gateway trailhead in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve; type the full name into a rideshare app.
The fine print
The codes trip up fare searches. The airline-industry code is AZA; the FAA identifier is IWA. Pilots and air-traffic documents use IWA; ticketing uses AZA.
The scale, by the airport’s own count: 2,036,218 passengers in 2025, the first year above two million, and a record month of 261,536 passengers in March 2025, spring training season. Sky Harbor handled about 25 times as many travelers in 2024. Allegiant flew roughly 98 percent of the airport’s scheduled passengers by the most recent published market share, with Sun Country as the other scheduled carrier. In 2026 the airport was picked for an FAA control-tower pilot program in May and, in September, for one of the first TSA PreCheck “Gateside” programs.
Getting there from Scottsdale means the Loop 202 or the 101 to the 202’s Santan leg. There is no light rail to the airport. Waymo said in August 2026 that Mesa Gateway would be added to its driverless service soon, which would make Phoenix the metro with the most Waymo airport access anywhere; check the app for whether that has happened when you land.