Majors Airport is a city-owned

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 ...

southeast 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 ...

of Greenville, in

Hunt County Hunt County is a county in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 99,956. Its county seat is Greenville. The county is named for Memucan Hunt, Jr., the first Republic of Texas Minister to the United States from 18 ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

. Originally named Majors Field, it is home to

L3Harris L3Harris Technologies (L3Harris) is an American technology company, defense contractor, and information technology services provider that produces C6ISR systems and products, wireless equipment, tactical radios, avionics and electronic systems, ...

Mission Integration Division (MID), which performs aircraft modification.

History

Majors Airport, named for Lieutenant Truett Majors, the first

native to perish in

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 ...

, began operations on June 26, 1942, as a training center for the

United States Army Air Forces The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

(USAAF). Lt Majors was killed in the 1942 Battle of the Philippines in January 1942. Greenville was chosen as a site for the USAAF basic flight-training center due to the efforts of the influential politician

Sam Rayburn Samuel Taliaferro Rayburn (January 6, 1882 – November 16, 1961) was an American politician who served as the 43rd speaker of the United States House of Representatives. He was a three-time House speaker, former House majority leader, two-time ...

. The base was dedicated and named on 5 January 1943. Majors Army Airfield (AAF) was assigned initially to the Gulf Coast Training Center (later Central Flying Command). The airport was at one point the home to approximately 5,000 pilots, support personnel, and civilian employees. Majors also was a major training base for Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP)s. Flying training was performed with

Fairchild PT-19 The Fairchild PT-19 (company designation Fairchild M62) is an American monoplane primary trainer aircraft that served with the United States Army Air Forces, RAF and RCAF during World War II. Designed by Fairchild Aircraft, it was a contempora ...

s as the primary trainer. Also had several

PT-17 Stearman The Stearman (Boeing) Model 75 is a biplane formerly used as a military trainer aircraft, of which at least 10,626 were built in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. Stearman Aircraft became a subsidiary of Boeing in 1934. Widely known ...

s and a few

P-40 Warhawk The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk is an American single-engined, single-seat, all-metal fighter and ground-attack aircraft that first flew in 1938. The P-40 design was a modification of the previous Curtiss P-36 Hawk which reduced development time and ...

s assigned. In addition to training USAAF pilots, the airfield was the training site for

Escuadrón 201 The 201st Fighter Squadron ( es, Escuadrón Aéreo de Pelea 201) is a fighter squadron of the Mexican Air Force, part of the Mexican Expeditionary Air Force that aided the Allied war effort during World War II. The squadron was known by the nic ...

of the Mexican Air Force. The training center was reassigned to

Second Air Force The Second Air Force (2 AF; ''2d Air Force'' in 1942) is a USAF numbered air force responsible for conducting basic military and technical training for Air Force enlisted members and non-flying officers. In World War II the CONUS unit defended ...

on 30 November 1944 as a group training center, primary for the assignment of replacement personnel to combat squadrons in Overseas theaters. Majors AAF was inactivated on 18 July 1945 after the defeat of Germany; the city of Greenville then took ownership, then leased the site to

TEMCO The Texas Engineering & Manufacturing Company (TEMCO), also known as Temco Aircraft Corporation, was a U.S.-based manufacturing company located in Dallas, Texas, USA. It is best known for eventually forming part of the conglomerate Ling-Temco-V ...

(which, after a series of acquisitions, became L-3 Mission Integration Division). The airport had airline flights (Central DC-3s) for a year or two around 1952. On 5 March 2014, a regional American Eagle jet heading from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport made an emergency landing after the pilot reported smoke in the cockpit. Flight 3400 was bound for Moline, Il., when it was diverted about 9 p.m. to Majors Airport in Greenville. Jim Hogan, a passenger from Iowa City, Iowa, seated in the exit row, opened the door and led the way for the other passengers to disembark.

Facilities

Majors 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 535 feet (163 m). Its one

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 ...

, 17/35, is 8,030 by 150 feet (2,448 x 46 m)

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 ...

. In the year ending 23 June 2016, the airport had 19,135 aircraft operations, averaging 52 per day: 99%

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 ...

and 1% military. 42 aircraft were then based at the airport: 86% single-engine, 5% multi-engine, 7% jets, 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 ...

Accidents and incidents

* 14 July 1994: A

Cessna 310 The Cessna 310 is an American four-to-six-seat, low-wing, twin-engine monoplane produced by Cessna between 1954 and 1980. It was the first twin-engine aircraft that Cessna put into production after World War II. Development The 310 first fle ...

Q, registration number ''N310AE'', crashed after an uncontrolled left-hand descent during a practice single-engine

go-around In aviation, a go-around is an aborted landing of an aircraft that is on final approach or has already touched down. A go-around can either be initiated by the pilot flying or requested by air traffic control for various reasons, such as an unstab ...

, destroying the aircraft and killing the student pilot and certified flight instructor (CFI) aboard. The

landing gear Landing gear is the undercarriage of an aircraft or spacecraft that is used for takeoff or landing. For aircraft it is generally needed for both. It was also formerly called ''alighting gear'' by some manufacturers, such as the Glenn L. Martin ...

was found to have been extended on impact, contrary to the manufacturer's recommended procedure to retract the gear during a go-around. The accident was attributed to ''"the CFI's failure to maintain minimum airspeed above V_MC, resulting in a loss of control during the single engine go-around. Factors were not attaining runway alignment and the CFI's failure to retract the landing gear for the go-around procedure."''

References

Other sources

* * Manning, Thomas A. (2005), ''History of Air Education and Training Command, 1942–2002''. Office of History and Research, Headquarters, AETC, Randolph AFB, Texas * Shaw, Frederick J. (2004), ''Locating Air Force Base Sites, History’s Legacy'', Air Force History and Museums Program, United States Air Force, Washington DC. * Thole, Lou (1999), ''Forgotten Fields of America : World War II Bases and Training, Then and Now'' – Vol. 2. Publisher: Pictorial Histories Pub,

External links