Fullerton Municipal Airport
Fullerton Municipal Airport , owned and operated by the
City of Fullerton, is the last strictly
general aviation airfield still operating in
Orange County, California.
The airport is located in the southwestern corner of Fullerton on Commonwealth Avenue, northeast of the junction of the
Santa Ana and
Riverside Freeways. The airport and its industrial park are surrounded by residential areas. It is popular among private pilots traveling to nearby attractions such as
Disneyland and
Knott's Berry Farm.
Fullerton Municipal Airport can trace its origins back as early as
1913 when
barnstormers and
crop dusters used the former pig farm as a makeshift landing strip. The site later became home to a
sewer farm.
The airport's "official" birthday is
1927. William and Robert Dowling, with the aid of H. A. Krause and the Fullerton
Chamber of Commerce, had petitioned the council for permission to turn the by then-abandoned sewer farm into a landing field. The Fullerton
City Council approved Ordinance 514 in January 1927, formally establishing the airport. The council leased the land to the chamber for five years, at a fee of $1 per year, and the chamber, in turn, subleased operations to William Dowling and friend Willard Morris of
Yorba Linda. The city would assume direct control of the facility in January 1941.
A portion of the
Howard Hughes feature
Hell's Angels was filmed at Fullerton in 1929. Hughes would feature later in Fullerton's history by buying a tract of land for
Hughes Aircraft. The campus eventually became home to Hughes Aircraft Ground Systems Group, which closed in
2000.
In 1949, Dick Riedel and Bill Barris of Fullerton Air Service, sponsored by the Fullerton Chamber of Commerce, set a world flight endurance record from the airport, keeping their modifiedc
Aeronca 11 Chief aloft for 1,008 hours and 2 minutes.
The control tower, built with
Federal Aviation Administration funds in
1959, was the first in Orange County.
Fullerton Municipal Airport covers 86 acres and has one runway and three heliports:
* Runway 06/24: 3,121 x 75 ft. (951 x 23 m), Surface: Asphalt
* Heliport H1: 37 x 37 ft. (11 x 11 m), Surface: Concrete
* Heliport H2: 37 x 37 ft. (11 x 11 m), Surface: Concrete
* Heliport H3: 37 x 37 ft. (11 x 11 m), Surface: Concrete
Its
control tower handles an average of 262 flight operations per day.
The airport and surrounding areas have seen their share of aircraft accidents. Residents have complained that pilots often deviate from their mandated approach to the airport, following the
Santa Fe Railway tracks. Pilots, in turn, complain that Fullerton and the neighboring city of
Buena Park have permitted too much dense residential development in the area, which had been almost entirely agricultural when the airport was first constructed.
Since 1986, no fewer than 28 planes have crashed at or near the airport, killing a total of 11. Most recently, four were injured on
September 27,
2004 when a 1986 replica of a
Ford Tri-Motor crashed during an airport day.
*
Fullerton Municipal Airport (official site)
