Porterville Municipal Airport is a city-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 ...

located three nautical miles (6 km) southwest of the central business district of Porterville, a city in

Tulare County Tulare County ( ) is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 473,117. The county seat is Visalia. The county is named for Tulare Lake, once the largest freshwater lake west of the Great Lakes. ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

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 territori ...

. According to the FAA's National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2009–2013, it is categorized 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.

History

The airport was opened in September 1942 as Porterville Army Airfield and was 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 ...

Fourth Air Force 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 ...

as a training base during

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 opposing ...

. It was a sub-base to Lemoore AAF, being used as a pilot training facility. Improvements to the site included a fueling system utilizing nine underground storage tanks. These tanks were filled and abandoned in place. Also located on site are ten fueling pits, which are presently unused. The field had the Air Echelon element from the Western Signal Aviation Unit Training Center at Camp Pinedale. At the end of the war the airfield was determined to be excess by the military and turned over to the local government for civil use. 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 ...

disposed of the property between 1948 and 1953. In 1948, were returned to Porterville. The remaining land was sold to the Tulare County Housing Authority.Thole, Lou (1999), Forgotten Fields of America : World War II Bases and Training, Then and Now - Vol. 2. Publisher: Pictorial Histories Pub,

Facilities and aircraft

Porterville Municipal Airport covers an area of 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 442 feet (135 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 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, concre ...

designated 12/30 with an asphalt surface measuring 5,908 by 150 feet (1,801 x 46 m). A shorter east-west runway (25/7), once occasionally closed and used for

NHRA The National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) is a drag racing governing body, which sets rules in drag racing and hosts events all over the United States and Canada. With over 40,000 drivers in its rosters, the NHRA claims to be the largest motorsp ...

sanctioned drag racing in the mid-1960s, was permanently closed during the 1980s. For the 12-month period ending January 30, 2009, the airport had 43,550 aircraft operations, an average of 119 per day: 98%

, 2%

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 <1%

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 92 aircraft based at this airport: 73% 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 ...

, 11% multi-engine, 10%

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 6%

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 aile ...

Airlines and destinations

Passenger

References

External links