General William J. Fox Airfield is a county-owned, 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 surfa ...

Los Angeles County, California Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the List of the most populous counties in the United States, most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, ...

, five miles northwest of

Lancaster, California Lancaster is a charter city in northern Los Angeles County, in the Antelope Valley of the western Mojave Desert in Southern California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 173,516, making Lancaster the 153rd largest city in the United ...

, United States. Locally known as Fox Field, the airport serves the

Antelope Valley The Antelope Valley is located in northern Los Angeles County, California, and the southeast portion of Kern County, California, and constitutes the western tip of the Mojave Desert. It is situated between the Tehachapi, Sierra Pelona, and ...

. The airport is named after William J. Fox, "a Marine war hero, a movie stunt man, the first Los Angeles County engineer and, for 20 years after his retirement, a cowboy." 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 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 ...

'' facility. The airport has limited scheduled cargo operations. The

U.S. Forest Service The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands. The Forest Service manages of land. Major divisions of the agency inc ...

has a fixed wing airtanker and helicopter base on the airfield which becomes one of the main hubs in the region for aerial firefighting suppression efforts during fire season.

Historical airline service

Fox Field had scheduled passenger air service as early as the late 1950s operated by Southwest Airways with

Douglas DC-3 The Douglas DC-3 is a propeller-driven airliner manufactured by Douglas Aircraft Company, which had a lasting effect on the airline industry in the 1930s to 1940s and World War II. It was developed as a larger, improved 14-bed sleeper versi ...

aircraft primarily to the

Los Angeles International Airport Los Angeles International Airport , commonly referred to as LAX (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary international airport serving Los Angeles, California and its surrounding metropolitan area. LAX is located in the ...

( LAX). Southwest Airways then changed its name to

Pacific Air Lines Pacific Air Lines was a regional airline (then called a "local service" air carrier as defined by the federal Civil Aeronautics Board) on the West Coast of the United States that began scheduled passenger flights in the mid 1940s under the name ...

which in 1959 was operating new Fairchild F-27 turboprops from the airport nonstop to Las Vegas and also to

Burbank Airport Hollywood Burbank Airport, legally and formerly marketed as Bob Hope Airport after entertainer Bob Hope , is a public airport northwest of downtown Burbank, in Los Angeles County, California, United States.. Federal Aviation Administration. e ...

(BUR, now

Hollywood Burbank Airport Hollywood Burbank Airport, legally and formerly marketed as Bob Hope Airport after entertainer Bob Hope , is a public airport northwest of downtown Burbank, in Los Angeles County, California, United States.. Federal Aviation Administration. ef ...

) on a daily basis as well as operating

Martin 4-0-4 The Martin 4-0-4 was an American pressurized passenger airliner built by the Glenn L. Martin Company. In addition to airline use initially in the United States, it was used by the United States Coast Guard and United States Navy as the RM-1G ...

and DC-3 prop aircraft on flights to LAX. By 1960, Pacific was operating daily F-27 propjet flights to San Francisco (SFO) from Fox Field via a stop in Bakersfield and also nonstop to LAX. In 1968, Pacific Air Lines merged with

Bonanza Air Lines Bonanza Air Lines was an airline (known at the time as a "local service" air carrier as defined by the federal Civil Aeronautics Board) in the Western United States (and eventually Mexico) from 1945 until it merged with two other local service ai ...

and

West Coast Airlines West Coast Airlines was an airline (then called a "local service" airline as defined by the federal Civil Aeronautics Board) linking small cities in the Pacific Northwest with larger cities in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Montana, California ...

to form

Air West Air West is an airline based in Khartoum, Sudan. It operates domestic passenger services and international cargo charters. Its main base is Khartoum International Airport, with a hub at Sharjah International Airport. This airline has no connect ...

which in turn continued to serve the airport with F-27 flights to LAX. Also in 1968, Cable Commuter Airlines was operating

de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter The de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter is a Canadian STOL (Short Takeoff and Landing) utility aircraft developed by de Havilland Canada, which produced the aircraft from 1965 to 1988; Viking Air purchased the type certificate, then restart ...

service to LAX. Air West then changed its name to

Hughes Airwest Hughes Airwest was a regional airline in the western United States, backed by Howard Hughes' Summa Corporation. Its original name in 1968 was Air West and the air carrier was owned by Nick Bez. Hughes Airwest flew routes in the wes ...

which continued to operate scheduled passenger service with the Fairchild F-27 turboprop primarily to Los Angeles International Airport during the early 1970s with several nonstop flights a day. By 1983, Mojave Airlines was operating flights to LAX, San Diego, Ontario and Mammoth Yosemite Airport with

Beechcraft C99 The Beechcraft Model 99 is a civilian aircraft produced by Beechcraft. It is also known as the Beech 99 Airliner and the Commuter 99. The 99 is a twin-engine, unpressurized, 15 to 17 passenger seat turboprop aircraft, derived from the earlier Be ...

turboprops. In 1985, commuter air carrier

Desert Sun Airlines Mesa Airlines, Inc., is an American regional airline based in Phoenix, Arizona. It is an FAA Part 121–certificated air carrier operating under air carrier certificate number MASA036A issued on June 29, 1979. It is a subsidiary of Mesa Air Gr ...

was operating up to five flights a day nonstop to LAX with

Beechcraft 99 The Beechcraft Model 99 is a civilian aircraft produced by Beechcraft. It is also known as the Beech 99 Airliner and the Commuter 99. The 99 is a twin-engine, unpressurized, 15 to 17 passenger seat turboprop aircraft, derived from the earlier Be ...

turboprops.http://www.departedflights.com, Feb. 15, 1985 Official Airline Guide (OAG), LAX schedules Fox Field currently does not have any scheduled passenger flights, with the nearest airline service being available at the

Bob Hope Airport Hollywood Burbank Airport, legally and formerly marketed as Bob Hope Airport after entertainer Bob Hope , is a public airport northwest of downtown Burbank, in Los Angeles County, California, United States.. Federal Aviation Administration. ef ...

in Burbank.

Facilities

General William J. Fox Airfield covers 1,217

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 (493 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 2,351 feet (717 m) above sea level. Its 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, concrete ...

, 6/24, is 7,201 by 150 feet (2,195 x 46 m) asphalt. In the year ending August 10, 2011, the airport had 81,851 aircraft operations, average 224 per day: 97%

, 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. 157 aircraft were then based at this airport: 89% 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 ...

, 8% multi-engine, 2%

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 ...

, and 1% jet.

Airlines and destinations

Cargo

References

External links

Aerial image
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 ...

'' * *
{{County of Los Angeles Airports in Los Angeles County, California Transportation in Lancaster, California