Falcon Field is in an airport located in

Maricopa County, Arizona Maricopa County is in the south-central part of the U.S. state of Arizona. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 4,420,568, making it the state's most populous county, and List of the most populous counties in the ...

. It was originally built northeast of

Mesa A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge or hill, which is bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and stands distinctly above a surrounding plain. Mesas characteristically consist of flat-lying soft sedimentary rocks capped by a ...

, which owns it. However, it is now within city limits. The National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2017–2021 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 ...

''. Scheduled service to Bullhead City on Western Express Air ended in January 2007. 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, but Falcon Field is FFZ to the FAA and MSC to the IATA.

Adjacent Boeing heliport

The

Boeing Company The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product ...

operates a

heliport A heliport is a small airport suitable for use by helicopters and some other vertical lift aircraft. Designated heliports typically contain one or more touchdown and liftoff areas and may also have limited facilities such as fuel or hangars. I ...

and

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or a production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. ...

adjacent to Falcon Field, known as the Boeing Mesa Facility. Boeing uses the facility to manufacture and maintain the

AH-64 Apache The Boeing AH-64 Apache () is an American twin- turboshaft attack helicopter with a tailwheel-type landing gear arrangement and a tandem cockpit for a crew of two. It features a nose-mounted sensor suite for target acquisition and night v ...

military

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 ...

Other services

Local companies: * Alliant Techsystems (ATK) *

Boeing The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and p ...

CAE Global Academy Phoenix CAE Phoenix (formerly CAE Oxford Aviation Academy Phoenix, CAE Global Academy Phoenix and Sabena Airline Training Center) (CAE SATC) is an aviation school owned by CAE and located in Mesa at Falcon Field Airport. A former subsidiary of Sabena F ...

* Falcon Executive Aviation Inc. * Lockheed Martin *

Marsh Aviation Marsh Aviation is an aircraft engineering, design, maintenance and re-manufacturing company, situated on East Falcon Drive, at Falcon Field in Mesa, Arizona. The company often works as a sub-contractor to well-known brand-name aerospace compan ...

* MD Helicopters * Nammo Talley * Semflex * Special Devices Inc. * Timken * Trans-Matic *

Wal-Mart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

* GECO Inc. Local groups: * Falcon Field Area Alliance (FFAA) * Falcon Field Tenants & Users Association * Civil Air Patrol - Falcon Composite Squadron 305 *Mesa Police Department - Air Support Unit Local museums: * Arizona Commemorative Air Force Museum Education: * A campus of the

Sabena Flight Academy CAE Oxford Aviation Academy Brussels - Sabena Flight Academy is an aviation training organisation created in 1953, and located in Steenokkerzeel (Belgium). The school is now part of CAE Global Academy. The training is performed in Brussels, in M ...

is located on the airfield.

History

Falcon Field got its start before

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 ...

when Hollywood producer Leland Hayward and pilot John H. "Jack" Connelly founded Southwest Airways with funding from friends including

Henry Fonda Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was an American actor. He had a career that spanned five decades on Broadway and in Hollywood. He cultivated an everyman screen image in several films considered to be classics. Born and ra ...

Fred Astaire Fred Astaire (born Frederick Austerlitz; May 10, 1899 – June 22, 1987) was an American dancer, choreographer, actor, and singer. He is often called the greatest dancer in Hollywood film history. Astaire's career in stage, film, and tele ...

Ginger Rogers Ginger Rogers (born Virginia Katherine McMath; July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) was an American actress, dancer and singer during the Classical Hollywood cinema, Golden Age of Hollywood. She won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her starri ...

, James Stewart, and

Hoagy Carmichael Hoagland Howard Carmichael (November 22, 1899 – December 27, 1981) was an American musician, composer, songwriter, actor and lawyer. Carmichael was one of the most successful Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the 1930s, and was among the first ...

. Southwest Airways operated two other airfields in

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

-- Thunderbird Field No. 1 (now the site of Arizona Christian University) and Thunderbird Field No. 2 (now the site of Scottsdale Airport) -- to train pilots from China, Russia and 24 other Allied nations. Falcon was to be Thunderbird Field III and would train British pilots. However, the British said they would like the field to be named after one of their birds, and thus Falcon Field opened as the No. 4 British Flying Training School (BFTS). There were six BFTS airfields in the U.S., in Florida, Oklahoma, Texas, California and Arizona. The groundbreaking ceremony for Falcon Field was held at 10:30am on July 16, 1941. Mesa, Arizona mayor, George Nicholas Goodman, and

governor, Sidney P. Osbone, dug the first shovels of dirt. Mesa-Historic Falcon Field Hangers-1-Marker

In September 1941 the first cadets of the

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) an ...

arrived. They trained in

Stearman PT-17 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 North American Aviation AT-6s. The good weather, wide-open desert terrain, and lack of enemy airpower provided safer and more efficient training than was possible in England. Even so, twenty-three British cadets, one American cadet and four instructors were killed and are now buried in the

City Cemetery, along with several colleagues who have since died of natural causes. Several thousand pilots were trained there until the RAF installation was closed at the end of the war. The City of Mesa purchased the field from the U.S. government for $1. From 1945 to 1965 the field was leased out to industrial interests, including Talley Defense Systems, Astro Rocket Inc., Rocket Power Inc., the Gabriel Company and others. Eventually it became a civil airfield, and is now owned and operated by the city of Mesa. Falcon Field is the home of CAE Oxford Aviation Academy, the largest flight school in the world. Student pilots from Japan,

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

The Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

the UK The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

and

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

fly out of Falcon Field. Since 1976 Falcon Field has been the home of Airbase Arizona, one of the largest units in the

Commemorative Air Force The Commemorative Air Force (CAF), formerly known as the Confederate Air Force, is an American non-profit organization based in Dallas, Texas, that preserves and shows historical aircraft at airshows, primarily in the U.S. and Canada. The CAF h ...

(CAF) which operates a flying B-17G "Sentimental Journey" and a B-25J "Maid in the Shade" among other aircraft. On May 19, 2016, the Falcon Field World War II Aviation Hangars were listed in the National Register of Historic Places, reference #16000266.

In popular culture

Several scenes of the 1980 aerobatics film Cloud Dancer were filmed at this airport.

Notes

References

* * Bustrin, Mary Louise. ''My Second Job''. Mesa, AZ: Mary Louise Bustrin, 1990. * Dawson, Jim. ''The RAF in Arizona: Falcon Field, 1941–1945''. Newnan, GA: Stenger-Scott Publishing, 2002. * Mallett, Daryl F. ''Falcon Field''. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2009. * 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. * Simmons, Larry J. ''The Falcon Field Story''. Scottsdale, AZ: Larry J. Simmons, 2002.

External links

Falcon Field Airport

Mesa ~ Falcon Field (FFZ)
at Arizona DOT airport directory
Falcon Field
at VisitingPHX.com website
Tango One Aviation
the

fixed-base operator A fixed-base operator (FBO) is an organization granted the right by an airport to operate at the airport and provide aeronautical services such as fueling, hangaring, tie-down and parking, aircraft rental, aircraft maintenance, flight instruction, ...

(FBO)
Aerial image as of July 1992
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 ...

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 pro ...

'' * * *
{{Authority control Airports in Maricopa County, Arizona Buildings and structures in Mesa, Arizona Transportation in Mesa, Arizona 1942 establishments in Arizona Airfields of the United States Army Air Forces in Arizona USAAF Contract Flying School Airfields Airports established in 1942