Colorado Air and Space Port , formerly known as Front Range 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 ...

located in unincorporated

Adams County, Colorado Adams County is a county located in the U.S. state of Colorado. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 519,572. The county seat is Brighton, and the largest city is Thornton. The county is named for Alva Adams, an early Go ...

, in the United States, adjacent to

Aurora An aurora ( aurorae or auroras), also commonly known as the northern lights (aurora borealis) or southern lights (aurora australis), is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly observed in high-latitude regions (around the Arc ...

and southeast of

Denver International Airport Denver International Airport , often referred to by locals as DIA, is an international airport in the Western United States, primarily serving metropolitan Denver, Colorado, as well as the greater Front Range Urban Corridor. At , Effective Ju ...

. Colorado Air and Space Port serves the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area. The postal designation of Watkins, a nearby

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

, is used in the airport's mailing address. Colorado Air and Space Port

ICAO The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO ) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates the principles and techniques of international air navigation, and fosters the planning and development of international sch ...

/ FAA identifiers are KCFO/CFO. The airport has no IATA designation. Colorado Air and Space Port is a small

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 ...

airport, although increased demand has warranted several expansion programs in recent years. Currently, the airport serves as the base of a few flying schools, flight clubs, maintenance services, and air rescue training facilities. Due to its location on the flat plains of eastern

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

, as well as generally cheaper aircraft rental rates, it is a very popular airport for both flight training and recreational flights. It is also popular among owners and pilots of kit-built aircraft, and the

Experimental Aircraft Association The Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) is an international organization of aviation enthusiasts based in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Since its inception, it has grown internationally with over 300,000 members and nearly 1,000 chapters worldwide. ...

(EAA) has a very strong presence at Colorado Air and Space Port, which frequently hosts the EAA Young Eagles Rallies. In 2011, the State of Colorado applied to the FAA to certify Colorado Air and Space Port as a

spaceport A spaceport or cosmodrome is a site for launching or receiving spacecraft, by analogy to a seaport for ships or an airport for aircraft. The word ''spaceport''—and even more so ''cosmodrome''—has traditionally referred to sites capable of ...

. The application was approved on August 17, 2018, and announced on August 20, 2018.

History

Front Range Airport opened in 1984 when the now demolished Stapleton International Airport was the major air hub for the Denver metropolitan area. Until 2005, it was a

non-towered airport In aviation, a non-towered airport is an airport without a control tower, or air traffic control (ATC) unit. In the United States, there are close to 20,000 non-towered airports compared to approximately 500 airports with control towers. Airports ...

without

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 air ...

(ATC) services when the tallest general aviation

control tower 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 a ...

in the United States (191 ft) was opened along with full ATC services. After 19 years as airport director, Dennis Heap and the airport board parted ways in August 2013. Heap was replaced in the late spring of 2014 by Dave Ruppel. The airport was originally owned by the Front Range Airport Authority (FRAA), continuing until January 1, 2014, when the FRAA was dissolved and the airport and all employees were folded into Adams County government as a department. Since then, the airport has seen a marked improvement in general aviation, air-taxi, military traffic as well as other air-based businesses, such as the helicopter-based businesses of Air Methods.

Facilities and aircraft

Colorado Air and Space Port covers an area of which contains 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, 8/26 is 8,002 ft x 100 ft (2,439 x 30 m) and 17/35, measuring . For the 12-month ending December 31, 2019, the airport had 75,647 aircraft operations, an average of 207 per day: 98.5%

, <1%

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 1.4% military. There was at the time 292 aircraft based at this airport: 247 single-engine, 38 multi-engine, 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 ...

s, 1

ultralight Ultralight aviation (called microlight aviation in some countries) is the flying of lightweight, 1- or 2-seat fixed-wing aircraft. Some countries differentiate between weight-shift control and conventional three-axis control aircraft with aile ...

, and 2 jet aircraft. The airport also hosts an armory belonging to the Colorado Army National Guard. HHC, 5th Battalion,

19th Special Forces Group The 19th Special Forces Group (Airborne) (19th SFG) (A) is one of two National Guard of the United States, National Guard groups of the United States Army Special Forces. 19th Group—as it is sometimes called—is designed to deploy and execut ...

is based there. There are no military aircraft based at the airport.

Spaceport proposal

In October 2011, the governor of Colorado,

John Hickenlooper John Wright Hickenlooper Jr. ( ; born February 7, 1952) is an American politician, geologist, and businessman serving as the Seniority in the United States Senate, junior United States Senate, United States senator from Colorado since 2021. A mem ...

, formally requested that the

federal government A federation (also called a federal state) is an entity characterized by a political union, union of partially federated state, self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a #Federal governments, federal government (federalism) ...

designate Colorado a "spaceport state" and that the airport be designated a

for suborbital horizontal takeoff flights ( HTVL and HTHL). Spaceport designation would allow a facility offering suborbital tourism, travel, and cargo transport from one point to another on Earth. ''

The Denver Post ''The Denver Post'' is a daily newspaper and website published in the Denver metropolitan area. it has an average print circulation of 57,265. In 2016, its website received roughly six million monthly unique visitors generating more than 13 mil ...

'' reported that "No vertical launches are planned at the Front Range, unlike most of the other eight certified U.S. spaceports. Instead, space planes — an emerging technology — will use regular runways and jet engines to take off and land, switching to rocket power above 50,000 feet." Media sources in 2012 suggested that the

Sierra Nevada The Sierra Nevada ( ) is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primari ...

Dream Chaser Dream Chaser is an American reusable lifting-body spaceplane developed by Sierra Space. Originally intended as a crewed vehicle, the Dream Chaser Space System is set to be produced after the Dream Chaser Cargo System cargo variant is opera ...

spaceplane A spaceplane is a vehicle that can flight, fly and gliding flight, glide as an aircraft in Earth's atmosphere and function as a spacecraft in outer space. To do so, spaceplanes must incorporate features of both aircraft and spacecraft. Orbit ...

might be used for

suborbital A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched. Hence, it will not complete one orbital revolution, will no ...

spaceflights and that Colorado Air and Space Port might prove to be the preferred location, over Spaceport America in New Mexico. News reports indicated that the Colorado Air and Space Port proposal was gaining traction with political interests at the

state State most commonly refers to: * State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory **Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country **Nation state, a ...

and federal levels as well as with industry participants. One of those commercial interests was XCOR Aerospace, which was considering Spaceport Colorado as a candidate for HTHL operations with their

Lynx A lynx ( ; : lynx or lynxes) is any of the four wikt:extant, extant species (the Canada lynx, Iberian lynx, Eurasian lynx and the bobcat) within the medium-sized wild Felidae, cat genus ''Lynx''. The name originated in Middle Engl ...

rocketplane. However, XCOR announced in July 2012 that they would be moving their company headquarters and research and development activities to Texas, in part due to a significant set of financial incentives () offered to XCOR by the Midland Development Corporation (MDC) and the Midland City Council. , Colorado state law "grants limited liability to spaceflight companies, allowing spaceflight participants who sign waiver forms to sue only if they are injured or killed as a result of a firm’s 'willful or wanton disregard' for safety." Spanish architect Luis Vidal produced an architectural concept for the new airport in 2013. In December 2017, British aerospace company Reaction Engines began construction of a test facility at Colorado Air and Space Port for the development of its

SABRE A sabre or saber ( ) is a type of backsword with a curved blade associated with the light cavalry of the Early Modern warfare, early modern and Napoleonic period, Napoleonic periods. Originally associated with Central European cavalry such a ...

air-breathing rocket engine. By 2024 its operations ceased, but in 2025 Boom Technology announced it would move in to Reaction Engines' former space to develop and test its own supersonic jet engines. The spaceport designation was approved in 2018. In December 2020, Japanese aerospace company PD AeroSpace signed an agreement with the Air and Space Port that paves the way toward test flights of high-altitude planes above the plains east of Aurora. In October 2022 plans for Port Colorado, an industrial mixed-use development spanning 6,500 acres adjacent to Colorado Air and Space Port, were reported.

Gallery

File:Front Range Airport Colorado Terminal Exterior.jpg, Main offices and terminal at Colorado Air and Space Port File:Front Range Airport Colorado Interior and Cafe.jpg, Interior view of the main offices and terminal facilities at Colorado Air and Space Port File:Front Range Airport Colorado Airplane Maintenance.jpg, An aircraft getting stripped of paint in preparation for maintenance at Colorado Air and Space Port File:Front Range Airport Colorado Entrance.jpg, A view of the entrance to Colorado Air and Space Port File:Colorado Air & Space Port Control Tower.jpg, Colorado Air & Space ATC Control Tower KCFO, The Colorado Air and Space Port Air Traffic Control Tower (ATCT) is the tallest general aviation tower in the United States.

References

External links