Check Out Six of Our Favorite Permission-Only Private Airports

Having to call ahead for permission before landing is enough to keep many pilots away. Picking up the phone can be much like calling air traffic control for people who are shy about talking to the tower. What if the owner or manager of the private strip says we cannot land there? Rejection is hard to take.

Still, those seemingly forbidding fields are attractive because they often offer access to interesting places we’d like to visit. It may be a 1,500-foot grass strip on a lake or river with good fishing or a former Air Force base with a grooved, 12,000-foot asphalt runway that is 300 feet wide. Some of these places have great names, too, like Starbase, Pickles, Hideaway, and Flying M Ranch. Spending hours perusing charts might convince you that Flying M is the most popular name for private airports, but Eagle’s Nest is certainly in the running.

Several years ago, a visit to Greig Farm (9NK4), a private strip in Red Hook, New York, changed my mind about private airports. The farm includes a café where we had driven to meet friends for breakfast. Across the road, I spotted a rare Meyers 200 and a turf runway cutting through the field. Our friends told me the farmer flew in and out regularly. I later looked up the airport, called the manager, and got permission to fly in for lunch. It was easy, and I have been back several times for the wonderful sandwiches and engaging talk about the Meyers.

Don’t be afraid to tap out the phone numbers in the private airport listings to see if the runway is open and if the folks in charge will let you land. They probably will. But if they don’t, just try the next one, as there are thousands of private strips across the U.S.

Here are six that I would like to visit this year:

Located about halfway up the Maine coast in the middle of Penobscot Bay, Vinalhaven is the largest of the state’s many offshore Islands at 23 square miles. For a time it was a leading producer of granite, and the pinkish stone quarried there can be found in famous structures like the Brooklyn Bridge and Washington Monument. Today, it is known for its large fishing fleet (and short gravel runway—1,510 feet). Walking is a good way to get around, but a folding bike in the baggage compartment would be just right.

You might want to bring your golf clubs because Cape Charles is known for its courses. The town is a planned community from the Victorian era, located on Virginia’s eastern shore near the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. The town was part of an 1882 plan to extend the Pennsylvania Railroad to the bay and ultimately ship goods to Richmond. Cape Charles essentially rose and fell with the popularity of railroads, but it has staged a comeback in the last several years, driven by an influx of new residents and businesses.

The approach to this forest-lined 1,800-foot turf strip is over water for a little more scenic drama and excitement, especially if you haven’t practiced your short-field technique lately. Seriously, be sure to practice first. Sitting on one of many bends of the serpentine Lake of the Ozarks, the airport is a gateway to the area’s camping and fishing sites. The lake, actually a reservoir formed by a hydroelectric project in 1931, was once the largest man-made lake in the U.S.

A fly-in residential community, Sky Meadows is close to downtown Spokane and less than 20 nautical miles from Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho. Spokane is home to the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture and Riverfront Park, which was the site of the 1974 World’s Fair. Other attractions include rides, tours, a skate park, and Spokane Falls, a waterfall and dam in the central business district.

Originally named NAS Sunnyvale, this former U.S. Navy air station dates to the days when airships looked like the wave of the future and was home base to the huge airship USS Macon. Hangars One, Two, and Three, which housed naval airships, still dominate the site and are among the world’s largest freestanding structures. Today, the property is a joint civil and military complex that includes NASA’s Ames Research Center and 1,000 acres that NASA leased to tech company Google in 2014. 

While many of Maine’s private strips might be too short for comfort, the 12,101-foot long, 300-foot wide runway at this former Strategic Air Command base should be easy even for pilots who tend to come in high and fast on the approach. While used as a business development zone today, Loring still has a Cold War feel, especially from the tarmac near the base of the control tower, where you can imagine swarms of B-36 Peacemaker bombers scrambling into the air. The base later was home to B-52 squadrons. It closed in 1994.