Ontonagon County Airport, also known as Schuster Field , is a county-owned 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 ...

located 3 miles (5 km) west of the central business district of

Ontonagon, Michigan Ontonagon ( ) is a village in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 1,285 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat and only village of Ontonagon County. The village is located within Ontonagon Township, at the mouth of the Ontonago ...

, a village in

Ontonagon County, Michigan Ontonagon County ( ) is a county in the Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 5,816, making it Michigan's third-least populous county. The county seat is Ontonagon. The county was set off i ...

, United States. It is included in the

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic ...

(FAA) National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2021–2025, in which it is categorized as a basic

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. Although most airports in the United States 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 FAA and International Air Transport Association (IATA), this airport is assigned OGM by the FAA but has no designation from the IATA. It is the westernmost U.S. airport in the Eastern Time Zone. In 2018, the airport was the base for a search and rescue training mission run by the US Navy and the Air National Guard. MH-60 Sea Hawk Helicopters and A-10 Thunderbolts operated at the airport as part of the mission.

Facilities and aircraft

Ontonagon County Airport covers an area of 360 acres (145 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 § Ver ...

of 665 feet (203 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 '' ari ...

. 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, concre ...

: 17/35 is 3,503 by 75 feet (1,068 x 23 m) with an asphalt surface, with one approved RNAV approach. The airport has a

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 instruction, ...

that sells avgas and offers amenities such as coffee, a crew lounge, and a snooze room. A number of airport upgrade plans were announced in 2016, including installing an Automatic Weather Observation System (AWOS), extending the runway length and clearing land to create a runway protection zone for emergency landings. The cost of the AWOS system was expected to be largely covered by the

, and airport officials say installing it would make it easier for commercial operators to use the airport. Other potential upgrades included adding an approved straight-in

instrument approach In aviation, an instrument approach or instrument approach procedure (IAP) is a series of predetermined maneuvers for the orderly transfer of an aircraft operating under instrument flight rules from the beginning of the initial approach to a landi ...

(at the time the airport only had a circling approach), adding a new gas line to serve the airport, upgrading asphalt around airport buildings, and building a larger

hangar A hangar is a building or structure designed to hold aircraft or spacecraft. Hangars are built of metal, wood, or concrete. The word ''hangar'' comes from Middle French ''hanghart'' ("enclosure near a house"), of Germanic origin, from Frankish ...

to help more pilots lease space to store their

aircraft An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engine ...

. For the 12-month period ending December 31, 2019, the airport had 100 aircraft operations, an average of less than 1 per day. It was composed entirely of 100%

. In January 2023, there were 6 aircraft based at this airport: all 6 single-engine

airplanes An airplane or aeroplane (informally plane) is a fixed-wing aircraft that is propelled forward by thrust from a jet engine, propeller, or rocket engine. Airplanes come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and wing configurations. The broad spectr ...

Accidents and incidents

* Flight crews and the Civil Air Patrol searched for a missing aircraft, a Piper Cherokee 180, that never arrived at the airport on the weekend of August 3 and 4, 2019.

References

External links

* from the

Michigan DOT The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) is a constitutional government principal department of the US state of Michigan. The primary purpose of MDOT is to maintain the Michigan State Trunkline Highway System which includes all Interstate ...

Airport Directory *
{{Airports in Michigan Airports in Michigan Buildings and structures in Ontonagon County, Michigan Transportation in Ontonagon County, Michigan Airports in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan

Facilities and aircraft

Accidents and incidents

See also

References

External links