Fresno Chandler Executive Airport is a 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 surface ...

west of the

central business district A central business district (CBD) is the commercial and business centre of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides with the "city ...

Fresno, California Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, makin ...

, United States. It is owned by the City of Fresno and managed by the city’s Airports Division. Chandler Airport opened in November 1929 and served as Fresno’s primary airport for civil and commercial aviation until 1948. Today, Chandler is mostly used by general aviation aircraft and is a designated as a

reliever airport A relief airport or reliever airport is an airport that is built or designated to provide relief or additional capacity to an area when the primary commercial airport(s) requires additional capacity, on a long-term or temporary basis. Reliever a ...

for the larger

Fresno Yosemite International Airport Fresno Yosemite International Airport is a joint military/public airport in Fresno, California, United States. It is the primary commercial airport for the San Joaquin Valley and three national parks: Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon. It o ...

, located northeast which is served by commercial airlines.

Sierra Sky Park Airport Sierra Sky Park Airport is a privately owned, public-use airport northwest of the central business district of Fresno, a city in Fresno County, California, United States. Other area airports are Fresno Chandler Executive Airport and Fresno Yos ...

, a privately owned airport open to the public, that also serves general aviation aircraft, is located north.

History

Fresno Chandler Executive Airport is one of the oldest operational airports in California. Its history stretches back to the end of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. At the time, there were no facilities for aviation in the Fresno area. Recognizing the problem, husband and wife Wilber F. Chandler and Edna Maria Goble allowed pilots to take off and land in their fields once the crops were harvested. Pilots called the site "Chandler Field." Efforts to raise funds for a permanent aviation field in Fresno started in the early 1920s. One notable fundraiser was the "World's Greatest Aerial Circus" held at the Chandler farm on the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day 1923, featuring races, parachute jumps and dual wing walking. In 1929, the Chandler family donated 100 acres of land to the city to be used as a public-use airfield. The site was named after the family and opened as Chandler Air Field in November 1929. The airport was used by both civil and commercial aviation. On March 23, 1930,

Charles Lindbergh Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, military officer, author, inventor, and activist. On May 20–21, 1927, Lindbergh made the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris, a distance o ...

and his wife landed briefly at the airport and were greeted by a crowd of 20,000. The

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

(WPA) funded the construction of the airport terminal and administration building along with other support buildings in 1936. , the building still stands and remains in active use. It is considered to be one of the most intact WPA funded airports in the United States. The WPA also extended Chandler's runway to 4,000 feet in 1938. However, despite the investments, it was already clear that the small facility would not be able to accommodate the increasingly larger airplanes used by the commercial airlines. In early 1941, shortly before the United States officially entered

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the

United States Army Air Corps The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) was the aerial warfare service component of the United States Army between 1926 and 1941. After World War I, as early aviation became an increasingly important part of modern warfare, a philosophical r ...

Southwest Air District The Fourth Air Force (4 AF) is a numbered air force of the Air Force Reserve Command (AFRC). It is headquartered at March Air Reserve Base, California. 4 AF directs the activities and supervises the training of more than 30,000 Air Force Res ...

took over the airport while nearby

Hammer Field Fresno Yosemite International Airport is a joint military/public airport in Fresno, California, United States. It is the primary commercial airport for the San Joaquin Valley and three national parks: Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon. It ...

was being built. Hammer Field opened in June 1942 and all military activity moved there. After the end of the war, Hammer Field was inactivated by the Army Air Forces, and in 1946 the

War Assets Administration The War Assets Administration (WAA) was created to dispose of United States government-owned surplus material and property from World War II. The WAA was established in the Office for Emergency Management, effective March 25, 1946, by Executive Ord ...

reallocated the property to the city of Fresno. The now civilian airport re-opened in 1948 as the Fresno Air Terminal (FAT) (it has since been renamed the

Trans World Airlines Trans World Airlines (TWA) was a major American airline which operated from 1930 until 2001. It was formed as Transcontinental & Western Air to operate a route from New York City to Los Angeles via St. Louis, Kansas City, and other stops, with F ...

(TWA) and

United Airlines United Airlines, Inc. (commonly referred to as United), is a major American airline headquartered at the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois.

flights to San Francisco/Oakland and Los Angeles moved from Chandler Field to the newly opened airport. After the move, Chandler Airport was designated as a

for Fresno Yosemite International Airport and has been marketed as an

executive airport This is a list of airports with "Executive" in the title. List of executive airports Canada * Burlington Executive Airport * Gatineau-Ottawa Executive Airport * Oshawa Executive Airport United Arab Emirates * Al Bateen Executive Airport United St ...

located closer to Downtown Fresno.

Facilities and aircraft

Fresno Chandler Executive Airport covers 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 § Vert ...

of above

mean sea level There are several kinds of mean in mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. ...

. It has one

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 a ...

paved

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 concrete, as ...

designated 12/30 that is . For the 12-month period ending May 9, 2017 the airport had 24,885

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 ...

aircraft operations, an average of 68 per day. At that time there were 124 aircraft based at this airport: 83% 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 gen ...

, 7%

ultralight Ultralight aviation (called microlight aviation in some countries) is the flying of lightweight, 1- or 2-seat fixed-wing aircraft. Some countries differentiate between weight-shift control and conventional three-axis control aircraft with ailer ...

, 6% multi-engine, 4%

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 ...

, and 1% jet.

References

www.airfieldsdatabase.com

External links

* * {{USAAF 4th Air Force World War II Airports in Fresno County, California San Joaquin Valley Airfields of the United States Army Air Forces in California

History

Facilities and aircraft

See also

References

External links