Essex County Airport , informally known as Caldwell Airport, is a 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 in

Fairfield Township, Essex County, New Jersey Fairfield is a township in far northwestern Essex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township's population was 7,466, reflecting an increase of 403 (+5.7%) from the 7,063 counted in the 2000 Census, w ...

, two

nautical mile A nautical mile is a unit of length used in air, marine, and space navigation, and for the definition of territorial waters. Historically, it was defined as the meridian arc length corresponding to one minute ( of a degree) of latitude. Tod ...

s (4 km) north 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 ...

Caldwell Caldwell may refer to: People * Caldwell (surname) * Caldwell (given name) * Caldwell First Nation, a federally recognized Indian band in southern Ontario, Canada Places Great Britain * Caldwell, Derbyshire, a hamlet * Caldwell, Eas ...

, a

borough A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle Ag ...

of northwestern Essex County in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delawa ...

. It is owned by the Essex County Improvement Authority. This facility is included in the

National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems The National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS) is an inventory of U.S. aviation infrastructure assets. NPIAS was developed and now maintained by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). It identifies existing and proposed airports tha ...

for 2011–2015, which categorized it 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 ...

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 ...

''.

History

In April 1929 Essex Airport Corporation was formed by Walter Marvin and six other individuals. The intention of the company was to open an airport to serve

Montclair, New Jersey Montclair () is a township in Essex County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Situated on the cliffs of the Watchung Mountains, Montclair is a wealthy and diverse commuter town and suburb of New York City within the New York metropolitan area. ...

, a town seven miles (11 km) away. The tract of land that Essex Airport Corporation intended for the airport was the Fairfield Dairy Company land that had also been used during World War I as a temporary airfield for the Naval Rifle Range which had been located along the

Passaic River Passaic River ( ) is a river, approximately long, in Northern New Jersey. The river in its upper course flows in a highly circuitous route, meandering through the swamp lowlands between the ridge hills of rural and suburban northern New Jersey, ...

in Pine Brook. Some of the early references to the airport have the designation "Marvin Airport", named after Walter Marvin. In 1999, the airport gained national attention when John F. Kennedy Jr., who based his private aircraft there,

crashed "Crashed" is the third U.S. rock Single (music), single, (the fifth overall), from the band Daughtry (band), Daughtry's debut album. It was released only to U.S. rock stations on September 5, 2007. Upon its release the song got adds at those stat ...

hours after departing the airport en route for

Martha's Vineyard Martha's Vineyard, often simply called the Vineyard, is an island in the Northeastern United States, located south of Cape Cod in Dukes County, Massachusetts, known for being a popular, affluent summer colony. Martha's Vineyard includes the ...

Facilities and aircraft

Essex County Airport (Fairfield, NJ) Dec 2015

Essex County Airport covers an area of 275

acre The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial and US customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one chain by one furlong (66 by 660 feet), which is exactly equal to 10 square chains, of a square mile, 4,840 square ...

s (111 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 § ...

of 172 feet (52 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 '' ...

. It has two

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 ...

s with

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surfaces: 4/22 is 4,552 by 80 feet (1,387 x 24 m) and 10/28 is 3,719 by 75 feet (1,134 x 23 m). For the 12-month period ending November 30, 2012, the airport had 74,459 aircraft operations, an average of about 200 per day: 97%

, 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) ...

and 1% military. Around that time there were 197 aircraft based at this airport: 81% single-engine, 16% multi-engine and 1.5% each jets and

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 attribu ...

s. The weather station reports are commonly identified as "Caldwell".

Accidents

* On August 29, 1982, a Cessna 172 carrying a flight instructor and student pilot collided with a Cessna 150 flown by a student pilot. The control tower did not have a radar system installed at the time and had instructed the Cessna 172 to fly an overhead entry to the traffic pattern while the Cessna 150 was on its downwind leg. The resulting collision sheared a wing off of the Cessna 172 and the ensuing crash resulted in the death of both occupants. The pilot of the other aircraft made a forced landing at the airport and skidded off the runway with the plane coming to rest on its nose. * On November 15, 2002, a Mooney M10 and a Piper PA-32R-300 collided in the traffic pattern while maneuvering at night for an approach to runway 22. The pilots of both planes were killed in the crash that followed. * On January 15, 2007, a Beechcraft A36 Bonanza in night IMC conditions impacted trees on a ridgeline while on approach to the airport. During at the start of its approach, the aircraft was 200 feet below the published minimum descent altitude for the instrument approach procedure and over the next 1.5 miles descended at a 7 degree angle and a 945 feet-per-minutes rate of descent resulting in controlled flight into terrain. Upon hitting trees, the plane flipped over, landed in a street and burst into flames killing the pilot. * On July 5, 2010, a Cirrus SR-22 crashed on its approach for landing about 100 yards North of the airport. All three passengers on board were killed in the crash and ensuing fire. * On August 15, 2015, shortly after takeoff from runway 22, the pilot of a Cessna 205 reported that he was unable to maintain power and attempted a turn back towards the airport. The airplane descended, impacted wooded terrain and was partially consumed by the post-impact fire killing the pilot.

Airlines and destinations

References

External links

*
Essex County Airport (CDW)
from

New Jersey DOT The New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) is the agency responsible for transportation issues and policy in New Jersey, including maintaining and operating the state's highway and public road system, planning and developing transportat ...

Airport Directory
Aerial image as of April 1995
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, ...

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 prov ...

'' * *
{{New York City Area Airports Airports in New Jersey Transportation buildings and structures in Essex County, New Jersey