Gambell Airport is a 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 ...

located in Gambell, a city in the

Nome Census Area Nome Census Area is a census area located in the U.S. state of Alaska, mostly overlapping with the Seward Peninsula. As of the 2020 census, the population was 10,046, up from 9,492 in 2010. It is part of the unorganized borough and therefore h ...

of 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 ...

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S. ...

. The airport is owned by the state.

Facilities

Gambell Airport covers an area of which contains one

asphalt Asphalt, also known as bitumen (, ), is a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product, and is classed as a pitch. Before the 20th century, the term ...

and

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of fine and coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement (cement paste) that hardens (cures) over time. Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water, and is the most wid ...

paved

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 ...

(16/34) measuring 4,500 x 96 ft (1,372 x 29 m).

Airlines and destinations

Prior to its bankruptcy and cessation of all operations, Ravn Alaska served the airport from multiple locations.

History

Gambell Airport was used as a transport 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 ...

as Gambell Army Airfield, facilitating the transit of Lend-Lease aircraft to the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

. It was also used by the

USAAF 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 ...

as an emergency landing field for aircraft patrolling the west coast of Alaska. On 27 February 1974, a

An-24 The Antonov An-24 (Russian/Ukrainian: Антонов Ан-24) ( NATO reporting name: Coke) is a 44-seat twin turboprop transport/passenger aircraft designed in 1957 in the Soviet Union by the Antonov Design Bureau and manufactured by Kyiv, Ir ...

LR carrying a crew of three and ten scientists on an ice-reconnaissance mission landed at Gambell due to

fuel exhaustion In an internal combustion engine, fuel starvation is the failure of the fuel system to supply sufficient fuel to allow the engine to run properly, for example due to blockage, vapor lock, contamination by water, malfunction of the fuel pump or in ...

in bad weather, causing a minor Cold War incident. Villagers, mostly

Yupik Yupik may refer to: * Yupik peoples, a group of indigenous peoples of Alaska and the Russian Far East * Yupik languages, a group of Eskimo-Aleut languages Yupꞌik (with the apostrophe) may refer to: * Yup'ik people The Yup'ik or Yupiaq (sg ...

Native Americans, provided space heaters and food. A U.S. Air Force

C-130 The Lockheed C-130 Hercules is an American four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft designed and built by Lockheed Corporation, Lockheed (now Lockheed Martin). Capable of using unprepared runways for takeoffs and landings, the C-130 ...

flew in a load of fuel bladders with

JP-1 Jet fuel or aviation turbine fuel (ATF, also abbreviated avtur) is a type of aviation fuel designed for use in aircraft powered by gas-turbine engines. It is colorless to straw-colored in appearance. The most commonly used fuels for commercial av ...

fuel from Anchorage to refuel the An-24, which departed at 7:30 pm. She dipped her wings in salute in a pass over the airfield, then returned to Soviet airspace. On 30 August 1975,

Wien Air Alaska Flight 99 Wien Air Alaska Flight 99 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight in Alaska to St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea. On approach to Gambell on 30 August 1975, it crashed into Sevuokuk Mountain, east of the airport's runway. Of the 32 on b ...

, a

Fairchild F-27 The Fairchild F-27 and Fairchild Hiller FH-227 were versions of the Fokker F27 Friendship twin-engined turboprop passenger aircraft manufactured under license by Fairchild Hiller in the United States. The Fairchild F-27 was similar to the standa ...

B on approach to landing, crashed into Sevuokuk Mountain after multiple missed approaches, killing the pilot and co-pilot and eight others out of the 32 crew and passengers on board. The weather was a low ceiling with sea fog, and below approach minimums.NTSB Report on the Crash
/ref>

References

External links

FAA Alaska airport diagram
( GIF) {{Airports in Alaska Airports in the Nome Census Area, Alaska St. Lawrence Island