Floyd Bennett Memorial Airport is a county-owned, public-use

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surfa ...

Warren County, New York Warren County is a county in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2020 census, the population was 65,737. The county seat is Queensbury. The county is named in honor of General Joseph Warren, an American Revolutionary War hero of the Batt ...

, United States. It is located three nautical miles (6 km) northeast of the central business district of

Glens Falls Glens Falls is a city in Warren County, New York, United States and is the central city of the Glens Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 14,700 at the 2010 census. The name was given by Colonel Johannes Glen, the falls refe ...

, in the

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

of Queensbury. This airport is included in the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2011–2015, which categorized it as a ''

general aviation General aviation (GA) is defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as all civil aviation aircraft operations with the exception of commercial air transport or aerial work, which is defined as specialized aviation services ...

'' facility. The airport is named in honor of

Floyd Bennett Floyd Bennett (October 25, 1890 – April 25, 1928) was a United States Naval Aviator, along with then USN Commander Richard E. Byrd, to have made the first flight to the North Pole in May 1926. However, their claim to have reached the pole is d ...

. It was formerly known as Warren County Airport. The annual Adirondack Balloon Festival is held at this airport.

History

From 1918 to 1946, the county's only airport, Floyd Bennett Field, was located on what are now the grounds of Queensbury High School. In 1941, ground was broken a few miles east at what is now the current site of the airport. The airport has been served commercially by

Colonial Airlines Colonial Airlines was a United States airline from 1942 to 1956 with bases at LaGuardia Airport (LGA) in New York City and at Montréal/St-Hubert Airport in Montreal, Canada. History It was founded as Canadian Colonial Airways on 6 March 1928 to ...

(1940s), Eastern Air Lines (1950s), Mohawk Airlines (1950s–1970s), Allegheny Airlines (1970s), and

Air North Air North Charter and Training Ltd., operating as , is a Canadian airline based in Whitehorse, Yukon. It operates scheduled passenger and cargo flights throughout Yukon, as well as between Yukon and the Northwest Territories, British Columbia ...

(1960s–1980s).

Facilities and aircraft

Floyd Bennett Memorial Airport covers an area of 628 acres (254 ha) at an

elevation The elevation of a geographic location is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface (see Geodetic datum § Ver ...

of 328 feet (100 m) above

mean sea level There are several kinds of mean in mathematics, especially in statistics. Each mean serves to summarize a given group of data, often to better understand the overall value (magnitude and sign) of a given data set. For a data set, the '' ari ...

. It has two

runway According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a runway is a "defined rectangular area on a land aerodrome prepared for the landing and takeoff of aircraft". Runways may be a man-made surface (often asphalt, concre ...

s with

asphalt Asphalt, also known as bitumen (, ), is a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product, and is classed as a pitch. Before the 20th century, the term ...

surfaces: 1/19 is 5,000 by 150 feet (1,524 x 46 m) and 12/30 is 3,999 by 100 feet (1,219 x 30 m). The north-facing runway 1 is equipped with an

instrument landing system In aviation, the instrument landing system (ILS) is a precision radio navigation system that provides short-range guidance to aircraft to allow them to approach a runway at night or in bad weather. In its original form, it allows an aircraft to ...

and a medium intensity approach lighting system with runway alignment lights. GPS-based instrument approaches are available to all four runway ends. A VORTAC is located at the field and during the 1990s and earlier was used as the basis for IFR approaches to the main runway. For the 12-month period ending December 31, 2011, the airport had 33,015 aircraft operations, an average of 90 per day: 85%

, 12%

air taxi An air taxi is a small commercial aircraft that makes short flights on demand. In 2001 air taxi operations were promoted in the United States by a NASA and aerospace industry study on the potential Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) ...

, and 3%

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...

. At that time there were 50 aircraft based at this airport: 92% single-

engine An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ...

, 4% jet, 2% multi-engine, and 2%

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...

Incidents

On November 19, 1969,

Mohawk Airlines Flight 411 Mohawk Airlines Flight 411, a Fairchild FH-227B twin-engine turboprop, registered N7811M, was a scheduled domestic passenger service operated by Mohawk Airlines, between Albany and Glens Falls, New York. On November 19, 1969, it crashed into Pi ...

crashed into Pilot Knob Mountain while attempting to land at the conclusion of a flight from Albany. All 14 passengers and crew were killed in the accident. On June 21, 1983, a Beechcraft BE-58 landed without deploying the landing gear after a training flight around the airport. The accident was blamed on the pilot's failure to deploy the landing gear. No injuries were reported, however, the plane was destroyed. On June 30, 1984, an Aeronca 11AC collided with a rock ledge approximately 1/4 of a mile north of runway 19 during takeoff. The pilot of the aircraft was killed in the incident. On September 27, 2002, a charter jet operated by Heartland Aviation Inc. suffered a landing gear failure during a hard landing on runway 1. The hard landing was attributed to the pilot's efforts to avoid deer that had wandered onto the runway. There were no injuries or fatalities. On May 15, 2010, a 1999

American Champion American Champion Aircraft Corporation, is a manufacturer of general aviation aircraft headquartered at the Rochester, Wisconsin airport. Founded in 1988 on the acquisition of the Champ, Citabria, Scout, and Decathlon, it has been producing replac ...

crashed on takeoff from runway 19. The crash was blamed on a large wind gust, which caused the pilot to lose control of the plane and crash into a ditch. No injures or fatalities resulted from the crash. On July 2, 2011, a

Piper Cherokee The Piper PA-28 Cherokee is a family of two-seat or four-seat light aircraft built by Piper Aircraft and designed for flight training, air taxi and personal use.Plane and Pilot: ''1978 Aircraft Directory'', pages 62–64. Werner & Werner Corp, ...

lost electrical power while on final approach into the airfield. As a result, the pilot was unable to deploy the plane's landing gear. The pilot was uninjured. On July 16, 2012, a single engine

Cessna 208 The Cessna 208 Caravan is a utility aircraft produced by Cessna. The project was commenced on November 20, 1981, and the prototype first flew on December 9, 1982. The production model was certified by the FAA in October 1984 and its Cargo ...

was landing on runway 19 when it blew a tire, causing the plane to flip multiple times. The pilot suffered a hand laceration and the plane was destroyed. On November 19th, 2021, a

Piper PA-28 Cherokee The Piper PA-28 Cherokee is a family of two-seat or four-seat light aircraft built by Piper Aircraft and designed for flight training, air taxi and personal use.Plane and Pilot: ''1978 Aircraft Directory'', pages 62–64. Werner & Werner Corp, ...

lost power after departing from runway 30. The pilot attempted to turn back and make an emergency landing on runway 19, but crashed into a fence just short of the runway at the north gate of the airport. The pilot was uninjured in the crash, however, his passenger was transported to a local hospital for treatment of minor injuries.

References

External links

Floyd Bennett Memorial (GFL)
at New York State DOT Airport Directory
Aerial image as of April 1995
from

USGS The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, a ...

The National Map ''The National Map'' is a collaborative effort of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and other federal, state, and local agencies to improve and deliver topographic information for the United States. The purpose of the effort is to pro ...

'' * {{US-airport-ga, GFL Airports in New York (state) Queensbury, New York Transportation buildings and structures in Warren County, New York