Olive Branch Airport is owned by the City of Olive Branch. It is a public use

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 De Soto County, Mississippi, United States. It is located three

nautical mile A nautical mile is a unit of length used in air, marine, and space navigation, and for the definition of territorial waters. Historically, it was defined as the meridian arc length corresponding to one minute ( of a degree) of latitude. Tod ...

s (6 km) northeast 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 ...

Olive Branch, Mississippi Olive Branch is a city in DeSoto County, Mississippi, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population is 39,711. Olive Branch is part of the Memphis Metropolitan Statistical Area, a region that consists of three counties in southwest T ...

. This airport was included in 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 2021–2025, which 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 ...

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 ...

''. The airport is about a 30-minute drive from downtown

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mo ...

and 10 minutes from the Memphis city limits, making it an easily accessible satellite airport for the

and business air travel communities wanting to access the East Memphis/Germantown/Collierville area.Zero to Jet.V2.htm AirVenture Flight Center Introduces 'Zero to Jet' Accelerated Regional Airline Training Program
news release from Belz Metro Industrial Park, June 2007 It is owned and operated by the City of Olive Branch.

History

In the early 1970s,

Holiday Inn Holiday Inn is an American chain of hotels based in Atlanta, Georgia. and a brand of IHG Hotels & Resorts. The chain was founded in 1952 by Kemmons Wilson, who opened the first location in Memphis, Tennessee that year. The chain was a division ...

announced they would construct what would be called Holiday Inn University and Conference Center in Olive Branch, Mississippi. Simultaneous with construction of the university, Holiday Inn began work on a industrial park and the Olive Branch Airport that opened in January, 1973. Today the development is known as Olive Branch Industrial Park. It is an fully planned, improved, and restricted industrial facility. It includes the Olive Branch Airport—one of Mississippi's busiest—offering a paved, lighted runway, and full service fixed-base operations (via Olive Branch Aviation). Today the Olive Branch Airport is owned and operated by the City of Olive Branch.

Facilities and aircraft

Olive Branch Airport covers an area of 414

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 (168 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 402 feet (123 m) above

mean sea level There are several kinds of mean in mathematics, especially in statistics. Each mean serves to summarize a given group of data, often to better understand the overall value ( magnitude and sign) of a given data set. For a data set, the '' ...

. It has 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 ...

designated 18/36 with an

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 ...

surface measuring 6,000 by 100 feet (1,829 x 30 m). There is a fully functioning "Class D" control tower, with an up-link to

Memphis International Airport Memphis International Airport is a civil-military airport located southeast of Downtown Memphis in Shelby County, Tennessee, United States. It is the primary international airport serving Memphis. It covers and has four runways., effective A ...

's radar, which is staffed from 7am - 9pm CST daily. The airport has an ILS to Runway 18 and a LOC/DME to Runway 36. Facilities include a general aviation terminal, 25 conventional hangars, 26 T-hangar units, and 140 paved tie-down spaces. The airport offers on-site car rental through

Hertz Rent-A-Car The Hertz Corporation is an American car rental company based in Estero, Florida. The company operates its namesake Hertz brand, along with the brands Dollar Rent A Car, Firefly Car Rental and Thrifty Car Rental. It is one of the three big rent ...

Enterprise Rent-A-Car Enterprise Rent-A-Car is an American car rental agency headquartered in Clayton, Missouri, in Greater St. Louis. Enterprise is the flagship brand of Enterprise Holdings, which also owns other agencies including Alamo Rent a Car and National ...

and lodging arrangements at the nearby Whispering Woods Conference Center (previously the Holiday Inn University and Conference Center) and Fairfield Inn. Olive Branch Aviation is 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 instructio ...

(FBO). They provide both 100LL and

Jet-A 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 for aircraft that are both based there and transient. Located at Olive Branch Airport is Luke Weathers Flight Academy, a flight school offering FAR 141 and 61 Flight Training, JET Transition Training, a Maintenance and Air Traffic Control Academy, UAV Pilot Training, Military Rotor Fixed Wing Transition, Air Force Candidate Flight Training, Mentoring and more. Olive Branch Airport is also home to Air Venture Flight Center is a flight training school and aircraft rental company based at the airport. They have a full-time staff of professional flight instructors and a large fleet of Cessna aircraft as well as a Piper Arrow and two Beechcraft Dutchess. It is also a Cessna Pilot Center and operates a charter company called Vectair-USA. In 2021, nationally known ATP Flight School established a school at the Olive Branch Airport. Any aircraft from a small training aircraft to a

Bombardier Global Express The Bombardier Global Express is a large cabin, 6,000 nmi / 11,100 km range business jet designed and manufactured by Bombardier Aviation (formerly Bombardier Aerospace). Announced in October 1991, it first flew on 13 October 1996, receiv ...

business jet can operate to, from, and around Olive Branch Airport. A few charter companies have piston singles and twins, jets, and/or turbojets based at Olive Branch Airport. Vectair-USA uses a Beechcraft King Air 9L for chartered flights. OneSky Jets has one King Air B100 based there. For the 12-month period ending December 16, 2021, the airport had 52,000 aircraft operations, an average of 142 per day: 91%

, 8% air taxi and 1%

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...

. In April 2022, there were 117 aircraft based at this airport: 94 single-engine, 15 multi-engine, 7 jet and 1

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 ...

References

External links

Aerial image as of February 1991
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 ...

'' * *
{{Memphis, Tennessee, state=collapsed Airports in Mississippi Buildings and structures in DeSoto County, Mississippi Transportation in DeSoto County, Mississippi Airports established in 1973 1973 establishments in Mississippi