Kenmore Air Harbor Seaplane Base, or Seattle Lake Union Seaplane Base, is a seaplane base and international airport on Lake Union,

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

, U.S., north of Downtown

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

Facilities and aircraft

Kenmore Air Harbor Seaplane Base is 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 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 one seaplane landing area designated 16/34. For the 12 months ending December 31, 2007, the airport had 35,500 aircraft operations, an average of 97 per day: 72%

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 28%

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 ...

Airlines and destinations

Passenger

History

The first seaplane flight from Lake Union was by

William E. Boeing William Edward Boeing (; October 1, 1881 – September 28, 1956) was an American aviation pioneer who founded the Pacific Airplane Company in 1916, which a year later was renamed to The Boeing Company, now the largest exporter in the United S ...

, on June 15, 1916. The lake has been served by commercial flights from

Kenmore Air Kenmore Air Harbor, Inc., doing business as Kenmore Air, is an American airline with its headquarters on the grounds of Kenmore Air Harbor in Kenmore, Washington, United States, north of Seattle. It operates scheduled and charter seaplane and lan ...

since 1946. In 2018, buoys and lights were installed in the lake to warn boaters of landing planes. Despite the warnings, recreational watergoers have continued to interfere with seaplanes, leading to both cancelled flights and legal efforts to more strongly regulate water use.

References

External links

Kenmore Air

Aerial photo as of 10 July 1990
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 ...

'' * {{authority control Airports in King County, Washington Seaplane bases in the United States