Port Isabel-Cameron County Airport is a public

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 ...

in Cameron County,

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 ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, serving the city of

Port Isabel, Texas Port Isabel is a city in Cameron County, Texas, United States. It is part of the Brownsville–Harlingen–Raymondville and the Matamoros–Brownsville metropolitan areas. The population was 5,006 at the 2010 census. The city's name is given ...

. Most U.S. airports use the same three-letter

location identifier A location identifier is a symbolic representation for the name and the location of an airport, navigation aid, or weather station, and is used for staffed air traffic control facilities in air traffic control, telecommunications, computer programm ...

for the

FAA The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...

and

IATA The International Air Transport Association (IATA ) is a trade association of the world's airlines founded in 1945. IATA has been described as a cartel since, in addition to setting technical standards for airlines, IATA also organized tariff ...

, but Port Isabel-Cameron County Airport is assigned PIL by the FAA and has no IATA designation. IATA assigned PIL to

Carlos Miguel Jiménez Airport Carlos Miguel Jiménez Airport is a small airport that serves the city of Pilar, in the Ñeembucú Department of Paraguay. Since 2005, the airport went through a major technological renovation.Pilar, Paraguay Pilar () is the capital city of the Paraguayan department of Ñeembucú, located along the Paraguay River in the southwestern part of the country. Located about from Asunción, Pilar serves as an important center of commerce and government for ...

. The

Port Isabel Detention Center The Port Isabel Service Processing Center near Los Fresnos, Texas holds detainees of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), whose immigration status or citizenship has not been officially determined or who are awaiting repatriation. It ...

, operated by

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ICE's stated mission is to protect the United States from the cross-border crime and illegal immigration tha ...

, is located adjacent to the airport. The airport previously used the FAA LID of T31 until at least July 1992. This designation was subsequently reassigned to

Aero Country Airport Aero Country Airport is a privately owned public airport west of the central business district of McKinney, Texas, United States. The airport has no International Air Transport Association, IATA or International Civil Aviation Organization, ICA ...

McKinney, Texas McKinney is a city in and the county seat of Collin County, Texas. It is Collin County's third-largest city, after Plano and Frisco. A suburb of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, McKinney is about north of Dallas. The U.S. Census Bureau l ...

History

The airfield was built by the U.S. military in the 1940s and used by 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 ...

and

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

for gunnery training. The base was closed in the early 1960s and most base facilities were turned over to the

in 1961-1963 for renovation and reuse as a detention facility. The hangars and runways were turned over to the Cameron County Commissioners in 1963 to be used as a civil airport.

Facilities

Port Isabel-Cameron County 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 18.6 feet (5.7 m) 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 four

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 ...

s: * Runway 03/21: 5,000 x 150 ft. (1,524 x 46 m), surface:

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 ...

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of fine and coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement (cement paste) that hardens (cures) over time. Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water, and is the most wi ...

* Runway 08/26: 5,317 x 150 ft. (1,621 x 46 m), surface: concrete * Runway 13/31: 8,001 x 200 ft. (2,439 x 61 m), surface: asphalt/concrete * Runway 17/35: 4,200 x 75 ft. (1,280 x 23 m), surface: asphalt/concrete For the 12-month period ending 11 January 2017, the airport had 29,420 aircraft operations, an average of 81 per day: 54%

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 ...

, 46%

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 less than 1%

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) an ...

. At that time there were 13 aircraft based at this airport: 46% 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 ...

, 46% multi-engine, and 8% gliders, with no jets nor

helicopters 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 ...

References

;Notes ;Citations

External links

* at

Texas DOT The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT ) is a government agency in the American state of Texas. Though the public face of the agency is generally associated with the construction and maintenance of the state's immense state highway system ...

Airport Directory Airports in Texas {{Texas-airport-stub