Hancock County–Bar Harbor Airport is a county-owned, public-use

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 ...

located in

Trenton, Maine Trenton is a town in Hancock County, Maine, Hancock County, Maine, United States, near Acadia National Park. The population was 1,584 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport is located in Trenton. In Ja ...

, eight

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 at t ...

s (9 mi, 15 km) northwest of the

central business district A central business district (CBD) is the Commerce, commercial and business center 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 wit ...

Bar Harbor Bar Harbor () is a resort town on Mount Desert Island in Hancock County, Maine, United States. As of the 2020 census, its population is 5,089. The town is home to the College of the Atlantic, Jackson Laboratory, and MDI Biological Laboratory. ...

, a city in

Hancock County, Maine Hancock County is a County (United States), county located in the U.S. state of Maine. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 55,478. Its county seat is Ellsworth, Maine, Ellsworth. The county was incorporated ...

, United States. It serves the residents of Hancock County with commercial and charter aviation services. During the summer months, the airport becomes one of Maine's busiest, with significant private jet operations bringing visitors to the numerous

summer colonies The term summer colony is often used, particularly in the United States, to describe well-known resorts and upper-class enclaves, typically located near the ocean, lakes, or mountains of New England, the Northeast United States, or the Great La ...

in the county, which includes

Mount Desert Island Mount Desert Island (MDI; ) in Hancock County, Maine, is the largest island off the coast of Maine. With an area of it is the List of islands of the United States by area, 52nd-largest island in the United States, the sixth-largest island in th ...

. Scheduled passenger airline service is subsidized by the

Essential Air Service Essential Air Service (EAS) is a U.S. government program enacted to guarantee that small communities in the United States, which had been served by certificated airlines prior to deregulation in 1978, maintain commercial service. Its aim is ...

program. As per

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is a Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government agency within the United States Department of Transportation, U.S. Department of Transportation that regulates civil aviation in t ...

(FAA) records, the airport had 10,562 passenger boardings (enplanements) in

calendar year A calendar year begins on the New Year's Day of the given calendar system and ends on the day before the following New Year's Day, and thus consists of a whole number of days. The Gregorian calendar year, which is in use as civil calendar in ...

2008, 10,100 enplanements in 2009, and 11,109 in 2010. It is 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. With the Airport and Airway Improvement Act of September 3, 1982, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was required to develop a ...

for 2017–2021, in which it is categorized as a non-primary commercial service facility.

History

The airport operated as Bar Harbor Naval Auxiliary Air Facility (NAAF) supporting operations of

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 ...

from September 1, 1943 until November 15, 1945. In July 2010, sitting United States president

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

landed at the airport, in a smaller version of

Air Force One Air Force One is the official air traffic control-designated Aviation call signs, call sign for a United States Air Force aircraft carrying the president of the United States. The term is commonly used to denote U.S. Air Force aircraft modifie ...

, for a vacation with his family.

Facilities and aircraft

Hancock County–Bar Harbor Airport covers an area of 468

acre The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...

s (189 ha) 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 83 feet (25 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 ...

paved

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 5,200 by 100 feet (1,585 x 30 m) and 17/35 is 3,253 by 75 feet (992 x 23 m). The airport is uncontrolled. For the 12-month period ending September 30, 2016, the airport had 21,250 aircraft operations, an average of 58 per day: 84%

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 ...

, 8% scheduled commercial, 7%

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 ...

. In September 2017, there were 33 aircraft based at this airport: 32 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 ...

and 1 glider.

Airlines and destinations

Cape Air operates

Cessna 402 The Cessna 401 and 402 are a series of 6 to 10 seat, light twin-piston engine aircraft.Montgomery, MR & Gerald Foster: ''A Field Guide to Airplanes, Second Edition'', page 108. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992. All seats are easily removable so ...

twin prop aircraft with

code sharing A codeshare agreement, also known simply as codeshare, is a business arrangement, common in the aviation industry, in which two or more airlines publish and market the same flight under their own airline designator and flight number (the "airli ...

agreements with

American Airlines American Airlines, Inc. is a major airlines of the United States, major airline in the United States headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, within the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, and is the Largest airlines in the world, largest airline in the ...

JetBlue Airways JetBlue Airways Corporation, stylized as jetBlue, is an American major airline headquartered in Long Island City, in Queens, New York City. Primarily a point-to-point carrier, JetBlue's network features six focus cities including its main hub a ...

and

United Airlines United Airlines, Inc. is a Major airlines of the United States, major airline in the United States headquartered in Chicago, Chicago, Illinois that operates an extensive domestic and international route network across the United States and six ...

. Previously, the airport was additionally served by

Silver Airways Silver Airways was a regional airline in the United States with its headquarters in Hollywood, Florida, near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Fort Lauderdale. It was founded in 2011 with assets from the former Gulfstream International Airlines, and la ...

Saab 340 The Saab 340 is a Swedish twin-engine turboprop aircraft designed and initially produced by Saab AB and Fairchild Aircraft. It is designed to seat 30–36 passengers and, as of July 2018, there were 240 operational aircraft used by 34 differen ...

and PenAir during the summer months.

Top destinations and carriers

Top destinations

Accidents and incidents

* On May 16, 1978, a Cessna 402B, registration ''N98720'' operated by

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. ...

, crashed on approach to the airport in low-visibility conditions, killing all four people aboard, including two pilots, the airline's founder and his son. The aircraft had departed from

Bangor International Airport Bangor International Airport is a joint civil-military public airport on the west side of the city of Bangor, in Penobscot County, Maine, United States. Owned and operated by the City of Bangor, the airport has a single runway measuring . ...

. * On July 25, 2024, a

Cirrus SR22 The Cirrus SR22 is a single-engine four- or five-seat composite aircraft built since 2001 by Cirrus Aircraft of Duluth, Minnesota, United States. It is a development of the Cirrus SR20, with a larger wing, higher fuel capacity and more powerfu ...

, registration ''N990PT'', crashed on approach to the airport in low-visibility conditions, killing the pilot and his passenger. The aircraft had departed from

Morristown Municipal Airport Morristown Airport is in Morris County, New Jersey, United States, three miles east of downtown Morristown and 40 miles west of Manhattan, New York City. Operated by DM AIRPORTS, LTD, it is in the Whippany section of Hanover. The National Pla ...

in New Jersey.

References

Other sources

* Essential Air Service documents
Docket OST-2011-0185
from the

U.S. Department of Transportation The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT or DOT) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is headed by the secretary of transportation, who reports directly to the president of the United States a ...

: *
Order 2011-11-26 (November 22, 2011)
prohibiting Colgan Air, Inc., operating as US Airways Express, from terminating its subsidized service at Bar Harbor and Presque Isle/Houlton, Maine (Presque Isle), and Plattsburgh, New York, and requesting proposals from airlines interested in providing replacement essential air service (EAS) at any or all of the communities, with or without subsidy. *
Order 2012-3-2 (March 2, 2012)
making Essential Air Service (EAS) air carrier selections at Bar Harbor and Presque Isle, Maine, and Plattsburgh, New York. At Bar Harbor, Hyannis Air Service Inc., operating as Cape Air, and Peninsula Airways, Inc. (PenAir) will jointly provide EAS for a four-year term beginning when either carrier begins providing full EAS. PenAir will operate only the peak summer months from Memorial Day through Labor Day, and will operate two daily nonstop round trips to Boston using 34-seat

aircraft subsidy free. Cape Air will operate on a year-round basis, providing one daily round trip (seven a week) from Memorial Day through Labor Day, and three daily round trips (21 a week) from September through May using 9-seat

aircraft for an annual subsidy rate of $1,631,223.

External links

Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport
official site
Aerial image
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 ...

'' * {{DEFAULTSORT:Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport Airports in Maine Essential Air Service Bar Harbor, Maine Transportation buildings and structures in Hancock County, Maine