Spadaro Airport was a privately 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 one nautical mile (2 km) northeast of the central business district of East Moriches, in Suffolk County, New York,

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 ...

. It was included in the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2011–2015, which categorized it 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 ...

''. Spadaro was connected to Lufker Airport via a taxiway and aircraft are able to taxi from one airport to the other. It was named for Bartholomew Spadaro, who originally owned the airport.

Facilities and aircraft

Spadaro Airport covered an area of 50 acres (20 ha) 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 50 feet (15 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 had 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 18/36 with an

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surface measuring 2,400 by 25 feet (732 x 8 m). For the 12-month period ending September 8, 2010, the airport had 6,100

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 16 per day. At that time there were 29 aircraft based at this airport: 52%

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 ...

, 41% 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 ...

, 3% multi-engine, and 3%

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 ...

. Bart Spadaro (founder of the airport) died October 5, 2013, at which time Susan Spadaro (Bart's daughter) had assumed control of the airport. Since then, aviation services such as aircraft maintenance, aircraft repair, aircraft inspections, aircraft rentals, flight instruction, sightseeing, etc. were no longer available at this facility. Skydiving operations continued at the airport and were provided by an independent operator. Airport maintenance was the removal of debris around the perimeter of the airport as well as removal of abandoned vehicles and hangars. The dirt taxiway was not very well maintained. The segmented circle was typically overgrown with weeds and was not visible during warmer months. There were no wind sock, flags or any other devices on the field to indicate wind direction or wind speed. The asphalt runway surface was in generally good condition although there was a pothole near the beginning of runway 18 on the right side. Markings for runway 18 were faded to the point of no longer being visible. Adjacent to the runway was mostly bare sandy ground that was prone to creating dust clouds and flung gravel in the presence of propeller blast. Susan Spadaro is not known to hold any credentials in the field of aviation. As of 2016, the airport is closed to operations. The town of Brookhaven decided to shut down the airport, due to failure of pilots to action the noise abatement procedures established by the town, bringing a series of complaints that led to its closure, as well as the closure of Lufker Airport for three months. In 2018, the airport and the land were listed for sale, the listing price, 2,900,000 USD.

References

External links

* at New York State DOT Airport Directory
Aerial image as of April 1994
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 ...

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'' * {{US-airport-minor, 1N2 Brookhaven, New York Airports in Suffolk County, New York