North Perry 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 ...

in the City of Pembroke Pines, west 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 ...

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywoo ...

, in

Broward County Broward County ( , ) is a county in the southeastern part of Florida, located in the Miami metropolitan area. It is Florida's second-most populous county after Miami-Dade County and the 17th-most populous in the United States, with over 1.94 m ...

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and ...

, United States. It is also known as Hollywood North Perry Airport, hence the HWO codes. The airport is owned by the Broward County Aviation Department. It is 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 ...

airport devoted to private and business

light aircraft A light aircraft is an aircraft that has a maximum gross takeoff weight of or less.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms, third edition'', page 308. Aviation Supplies & Academics, 1997. Light aircraft are used as utility aircraft co ...

activity.

History

In 1943, Henry D. Perry, a dairy farmer, sold of land to the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

for a flight training field between Hollywood Boulevard and Pembroke Road. It became known as ''North Perry Field'', and functioned as an auxiliary training facility for the main naval air station known as NAS Miami, the present day

Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (formerly Opa-locka Airport and Opa-locka Executive Airport until 2014) is a joint civil-military airport located in Miami-Dade County, Florida north of downtown Miami. Part of the airport is in the city limit ...

. There also was ''South Perry Field'', which was located to the southeast of North Perry (the Florida Turnpike runs right through this area today). South Perry was a grass field (no facilities/structures) that was only intended to be for North Perry overflow. North Perry remained inactive after the war, until 1950 when it was acquired by

to become a civilian airport. It was then upgraded for use by small aircraft, as a station for advertising

blimps A blimp, or non-rigid airship, is an airship (dirigible) without an internal structural framework or a keel. Unlike semi-rigid and rigid airships (e.g. Zeppelins), blimps rely on the pressure of the lifting gas (usually helium, rather than hyd ...

, and as an auxiliary use field for

United States Coast Guard The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and law enforcement service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the country's eight uniformed services. The service is a maritime, military, m ...

helicopters practicing

search and rescue Search and rescue (SAR) is the search for and provision of aid to people who are in distress or imminent danger. The general field of search and rescue includes many specialty sub-fields, typically determined by the type of terrain the search ...

skills. In the 1970s, the

U.S. Army Reserve The United States Army Reserve (USAR) is a reserve force of the United States Army. Together, the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard constitute the Army element of the reserve components of the United States Armed Forces. Since July 20 ...

established an Army Aviation Support Facility (AASF) at the airport, making it a joint civil-military airport. AASF North Perry hosted the 347th Medical Detachment (RA) of the Army Reserve, an air ambulance unit flying the

UH-1 Iroquois The Bell UH-1 Iroquois (nicknamed "Huey") is a utility helicopter, utility military helicopter designed and produced by the American aerospace company Bell Helicopter. It is the first member of the prolific Bell Huey family, Huey family, as we ...

helicopter, also known as the "Huey." In 1990, the unit was mobilized to active duty and forward deployed to Southwest Asia in support of

Operation DESERT SHIELD The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a Coalition of the Gulf War, 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Ba'athist Iraq, ...

and

Operation DESERT STORM Operation or Operations may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * ''Operation'' (game), a battery-operated board game that challenges dexterity * Operation (music), a term used in musical set theory * ''Operations'' (magazine), Multi-Ma ...

. Returning in 1991, the unit and AASF North Perry were disestablished in 1997 when the Army Reserve temporarily opted to withdraw from Army Aviation and relinquish all Army Aviation missions to the

Army National Guard The Army National Guard (ARNG), in conjunction with the Air National Guard, is an organized militia force and a federal military reserve force of the United States Army. They are simultaneously part of two different organizations: the Army N ...

. The Army Reserve later reversed course and retained most of its aviation units but did not reactivate the 347th MED DET (RA). One of the unit's helicopters, a UH-1V, Army Serial Number 68-13168, is currently in the collection of the

Valiant Air Command Warbird Museum The Valiant Air Command, Inc. Warbird Museum (VAC) is located at the Space Coast Regional Airport in Brevard County, just south of Titusville, Florida. The VAC contains vintage aircraft and a hangar with a restoration area. The VAC also has a M ...

Space Coast Regional Airport Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually conside ...

Titusville, Florida Titusville is a city in eastern Florida and the county seat of Brevard County, Florida, United States. The city's population was 43,761 as of the 2010 United States Census. Titusville is located along the Indian River, west of Merritt Island and ...

while the AASF facilities were released to North Perry Airport for conversion to civilian use. The facility suffered minor damage during

Hurricane Wilma Hurricane Wilma was an extremely intense and destructive Atlantic hurricane which was the most intense storm of its kind and the second-most intense tropical cyclone recorded in the Western Hemisphere, after Hurricane Patricia in 2015. Part o ...

in 2005. In 2007, North Perry Airport was named the 2008 "General Aviation Airport of the Year" by the Florida Department of Transportation.

Facilities and aircraft

North Perry Airport covers an area of which contains four

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: * Runway 10L/28R: , Surface: Asphalt * Runway 10R/28L: , Surface: Asphalt * Runway 19L/1R: , Surface: Asphalt * Runway 19R/1L: , Surface: Asphalt Other information: *Runways 10R/28L and 19R/1L are lit for 24-hour operation *There are 164 T-Hangars for aircraft storage *The

Air Traffic Control Air traffic control (ATC) is a service provided by ground-based air traffic controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through a given section of controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled airsp ...

Tower is operational from 7:00am – 9:00pm *There is extensive flight training activity at the airport. *There are two commercial banner-towing operators at the airport. For the 12-month period ending June 21, 2002, the airport had 172,744 aircraft operations, an average of 473 per day: 99.8%

, 0.2% military, <0.1%

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 <0.1% scheduled commercial. There are 325 aircraft based at this airport: 82% single-engine, 14% multi-engine, 4%

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.

Accidents and incidents

*On March 15, 2021, the two occupants of a Beech Bonanza aircraft that had just taken off North Perry Airport as well as a four-year-old child riding in a car nearby were killed after the plane smashed into the car which was occupied by the boy and his mother. The mother was severely injured but was later released from a local hospital. The crash was caught by a home camera which showed the plane exploded after impact. *On September 27, 2022 tornadoes related to

Hurricane Ian Hurricane Ian was a large and destructive List of Category 4 Atlantic hurricanes, Category 4 Atlantic hurricane that was the deadliest Tropical cyclone, hurricane to strike the U.S. state, state of Florida since the 1935 Labor Day hurricane. Ia ...

, damaged 15 planes, with no loss of life or injuries. *On October 17, 2022 A single-engine Aero Adventure Aventura II plane crashed with two people on board near North Perry Airport in Pembroke Pines, Florida, killing 32-year-old student pilot Jordan Hall and 34-year-old flight instructor Antony Rolland Yen. Authorities say experimental aircraft went down at approximately 11:45 a.m. in a residential neighborhood of Miramar just south of the airport. No one on the ground was injured. Early reports indicate the plane may have been leaking fuel before it went down. An investigation is underway.

References

External links

North Perry Airport
page at Broward County website * brochure fro
CFASPP
* * {{authority control Airports in Broward County, Florida Pembroke Pines, Florida Airfields of the United States Navy Military installations closed in the 1940s Airports established in 1943 1943 establishments in Florida Closed installations of the United States Navy