Auburn-Lewiston Airport is a public

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial Aviation, air transport. They usually consist of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surf ...

Androscoggin County Androscoggin County ( French: ''Comté d'Androscoggin'') is a county in the U.S. state of Maine. As of the 2020 census, the county's population was 111,139. Its county seat is Auburn and its most populous city is Lewiston. Androscoggin Cou ...

Maine Maine ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the United States, and the northeasternmost state in the Contiguous United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Provinces and ...

, United States. It opened in 1935. It is five miles southwest of the cities of Auburn and Lewiston, which jointly own and operate the airport. The airport is not served by any commercial airline, but is served by several charter airlines. The airport was the site of the

Bar Harbor Airlines Flight 1808 Bar Harbor Airlines Flight 1808 was a scheduled flight from Logan International Airport to Bangor International Airport in the United States on August 25, 1985. On final approach to Auburn/Lewiston Municipal Airport, the Bar Harbor Airlines ...

accident, which killed

Samantha Smith Samantha Reed Smith (June 29, 1972 – August 25, 1985) was an American peace activist and child actress from Manchester, Maine, who became famous for her anti-war outreaches during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. ...

, who gained global notoriety following her correspondence with Soviet leader

Yuri Andropov Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov ( – 9 February 1984) was a Soviet politician who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from late 1982 until his death in 1984. He previously served as the List of Chairmen of t ...

during the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

Lewiston NAAF

During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, the airfield was under the control of the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...

for use as a base for anti-submarine patrols by Squadron VS-31. It was commissioned on 15 April 1943 as

Naval Auxiliary Air Facility Lewiston Naval Auxiliary Air Facility Lewiston, located at Lewiston, Maine, was an airfield of the United States Navy from 1942-1945, during World War II. It was established as one of five Naval Air Station Brunswick auxiliary airfields. History A municip ...

, and used along with

Naval Air Station Brunswick Naval Air Station Brunswick , also known as NAS Brunswick or the Brunswick Naval Air Station, was a military airport located southeast of Brunswick, Maine, with a number of Navy-operated maritime patrol aircraft. As of November 28, 2009, the la ...

to train British and American

torpedo bomber A torpedo bomber is a military aircraft designed primarily to attack ships with aerial torpedoes. Torpedo bombers came into existence just before the World War I, First World War almost as soon as aircraft were built that were capable of carryin ...

pilots until 1945. Naval operations ceased on 1 December 1945, and the site was declared a surplus in 1946 and handed returned to the cities of Auburn and Lewiston in 1947 and 1948.

Historical airline service

Auburn-Lewiston was served by

Northeast Airlines Northeast Airlines was an American trunk carrier, a scheduled airline based in Boston, Massachusetts, originally founded as Boston-Maine Airways that chiefly operated in the northeastern United States, and later to Canada, Florida, the Bahamas, ...

on a route between Boston and Presque Isle, Maine from the mid 1930's through 1970. Several commuter airlines then served the airport including Executive Airlines (1970-1975),

Air New England An atmosphere () is a layer of gases that envelop an astronomical object, held in place by the gravity of the object. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A stellar atmosphere ...

(1975-1981),

Bar Harbor Airlines Bar Harbor Airlines was a commuter airline in the United States that operated from 1943 until it merged to form ExpressJet in 1991. It was headquartered at Hancock County–Bar Harbor Airport in Trenton, Maine, and later in Houston, Texas. ...

(1981-1987), and the final carrier,

Northeast Express Regional Airlines Northeast Express Regional Airlines was a regional airline based in Manchester, New Hampshire. Originally an independent commuter airline in Maine, it was bought by Bar Harbor Airlines and later as part of Eastern Express and Northwest Airlink b ...

(1987-1989). Bar Harbor became Eastern Express on behalf or

Eastern Air Lines Eastern Air Lines (also colloquially known as Eastern) was a major airline in the United States that operated from 1926 to 1991. Before its dissolution, it was headquartered at Miami International Airport in an unincorporated area of Miami-Dade ...

during its final years of 1986 and 1987. The airport has not seen commercial air service since 1989.Multiple issues of the Official Airline Guide

Facilities and aircraft

Auburn-Lewiston Airport covers at an

elevation The elevation of a geographic location (geography), ''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 equipotenti ...

of 288 feet (88 m) above

mean sea level A mean is a quantity representing the "center" of a collection of numbers and is intermediate to the extreme values of the set of numbers. There are several kinds of means (or "measures of central tendency") in mathematics, especially in statist ...

. It has two

asphalt Asphalt most often refers to: * Bitumen, also known as "liquid asphalt cement" or simply "asphalt", a viscous form of petroleum mainly used as a binder in asphalt concrete * Asphalt concrete, a mixture of bitumen with coarse and fine aggregates, u ...

runway In aviation, a runway is an elongated, rectangular surface designed for the landing and takeoff of an aircraft. Runways may be a human-made surface (often asphalt concrete, asphalt, concrete, or a mixture of both) or a natural surface (sod, ...

s: 4/22 is 5,001 by 100 feet (1,524 x 30 m) and 17/35 is 2,750 by 75 feet (838 x 23 m). In the year ending August 19, 2020, the airport had 50,000 aircraft operations, average 137 per day: 72%

general aviation General aviation (GA) is defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as all civil aviation aircraft operations except for commercial air transport or aerial work, which is defined as specialized aviation services for other ...

, 28%

air taxi An air taxi is a small commercial aircraft that makes short flights on demand. History The concept of air taxis existed as early as the 1910s. This concept goes back as early as 1917 with Glenn Curtiss’ prototype, the auto-plane. Furthermor ...

, and <1%

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

. 53 aircraft were then based at this airport: 39 single-

engine An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ge ...

, 9 multi-engine, 1 jet, and 4

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which Lift (force), lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning Helicopter rotor, rotors. This allows the helicopter to VTOL, take off and land vertically, to hover (helicopter), hover, and ...

Accidents

On August 25, 1985,

, carrying six passengers and two crew, attempted to land at the airport when it crashed 500 feet to the right of the airport's runway centerline, killing all passengers and crew. A subsequent investigation determined that the crash was due to a combination of factors, including weather conditions, incorrect altimeter settings, and pilot error. The accident attracted global attention since one of its passengers was

, a 13-year-old peace activist from

Houlton, Maine Houlton is a town in and the county seat of Aroostook County, Maine, United States, on the Canada–United States border. As of the 2020 census, the town's population was 6,055. It is perhaps best known for being at the northern terminus of Int ...

who gained global notoriety following her correspondence with Soviet leader

during the

References

External links

Aerial image as of 7 June 1997
from

USGS The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an government agency, agency of the United States Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geograp ...

The National Map ''The National Map'' is a Collaboration, 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 eff ...