Lake Hood Seaplane Base is a state-owned

seaplane A seaplane is a powered fixed-wing aircraft capable of taking off and landing (alighting) on water.Gunston, "The Cambridge Aerospace Dictionary", 2009. Seaplanes are usually divided into two categories based on their technological characteri ...

base located three nautical miles (6 km) southwest of the central business district of Anchorage 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 ...

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 Lake Hood Strip is a gravel runway located adjacent to the seaplane base. The gravel strip airport's previous code of has been decommissioned and combined with as another landing surface. Operating continuously and open to the public, Lake Hood is the world's busiest seaplane base, handling an average of 190 flights per day. It is located on Lakes Hood and Spenard (''Niłkidal'iy'' in the indigenous Dena'ina language), next to

Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport is a major airport in the U.S. state of Alaska, located southwest of downtown Anchorage. The airport is named for Ted Stevens, a U.S. senator from Alaska in office from 1968 to 2009. It is include ...

three miles from downtown Anchorage. The base has an operating control tower, and during the winter months the frozen lake surface is maintained for ski-equipped airplanes. 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 Federal Aviation Administration, FAA and International Air Transport Association, IATA, Lake Hood is assigned LHD by the FAA but has no designation from the IATA. The airport's International Civil Aviation Organization, ICAO identifier is PALH.

Facilities and aircraft

Lake Hood Seaplane Base has three

landing areas: E/W is 4,540 by 188 feet (1,384 x 57 m); N/S is 1,930 by 200 feet (588 x 61 m); NW/SE is 1,370 by 150 feet (418 x 46 m). Lake Hood Strip has one runway designated 14/32 with a gravel surface measuring 2,200 by 75 feet (671 x 23 m)., effective 2009-07-02 For 12-month period ending August 1, 2005, the seaplane base had 69,400 aircraft operations, an average of 190 per day: 88% general aviation, 12% air taxi and <1% military. There are 781 aircraft based at this seaplane base: 97% single aircraft engine, engine and 3% multi-engine.

References

External links

Alaska Airmen's Association webcam on Lake Hood

FAA Alaska airport diagram
(GIF) Airports in Anchorage, Alaska Seaplane bases in Alaska {{Alaska-airport-stub