M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport is a county-owned, public-use

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

Taney County, Missouri Taney County is a county located in the southwestern portion of the U.S. state of Missouri. As of the 2020 census, the population was 56,066. Its county seat is Forsyth. It is included in the Branson, Missouri, Micropolitan Statistical Area ...

, United States. It is located one

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. Tod ...

(2 km) south of the

central business district A central business district (CBD) is the commercial and business centre 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 with the "city ...

Branson, Missouri Branson is a city in the U.S. state of Missouri. Most of the city is situated in Taney County, with a small portion in the west extending into Stone County. Branson is in the Ozark Mountains. The community was named after Reuben Branson, postm ...

, one nautical mile (2 km) northeast of

Point Lookout, Missouri Point Lookout is an unincorporated community in Oliver Township, Taney County, Missouri, United States, near Branson and Hollister. Point Lookout is in U.S. post office ZIP code 65726. Point Lookout is part of the Branson Micropolitan Statisti ...

, and a few yards west of the old downtown area of

Hollister, Missouri Hollister is a city in Taney County, Missouri, Taney County, Missouri, United States. The population was 4,583 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. History Melinda Fortner settled in Hollister in the early 1880s, after establishing a cl ...

. It was formerly known as M. Graham Clark Field – Taney County Airport.

History

M. Graham Clark Field was originally developed as a private airport by the

College of the Ozarks College of the Ozarks is a private Christian college in Point Lookout, Missouri. The college has an enrollment of 1,426 and over 30 academic majors in Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science programs.https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/college ...

for use in their aviation science department, and was originally officially associated with the village of

, a small village on a bluff overlooking the White River Valley which was later completely bought out and overwhelmed by the development of the college. The airport identifier, PLK, was based on the name of the town officially associated with the facility under a federal grant through which the college originally developed the airport. The airport was named after M. Graham Clark, the president of the college at the time the airport was originally constructed. College of the Ozarks closed down its aviation science department in 2003. Shortly thereafter, the airport was donated by the college to Taney County so that the Branson and Hollister community would not lose its important general aviation airport. A private entity had contracted with the college to provide commercial airline service to Clark Field, serving Branson, in the late 1990s, but the venture failed and the terminal building, fire department building, and associated ramp were turned over to the college. The airport currently does not have any scheduled commercial airline service. Since the opening of the newly developed

Branson Airport Branson Airport is a public use airport located eight nautical miles (15 km) south-southeast of the central business district of Branson, a city in Taney County, Missouri, United States. Branson Airport, LLC is a private company operati ...

and the construction of new terminal facilities at the Springfield-Branson National Airport there is no expectation of airline service at Clark Field.

Name confusion

The airport was named after a person, M. Graham Clark, and the donation agreement between the college and the county calls for the airport to always be named M. Graham Clark Field, though it is usually referred to as Clark Field, or simply as "Clark." The official Facilities Directory lists the airport under the name of the town it was originally officially associated with, Point Lookout, so some pilots will refer to the airport as "Point Lookout." The Kansas City Sectional Chart depicts the airport as "Clark–Taney County", but on two lines, so some pilots refer to it as "Clark County." Some local pilots refer to it as "Taney County." Some transient pilots associating the airport with the principal city of Branson refer to it as "Branson," despite the proximity of the newly developed Branson Airport about eight miles to the southeast. Most recently, there has been a proposal to officially rename the airport as "M. Graham Clark Branson Downtown Taney County Airport" as a marketing move to attract some of the low end corporate traffic from nearby Boone County Airport or the Branson Airport. Although the airport board has never adopted the proposal, many local pilots pushing for the change have been referring to the airport as "Branson Downtown" or simply "Downtown". The use of so many names for the same airport has also been known to cause radio confusion in dense traffic. It is not unusual for approaching traffic making an initial call to refer to the airport as "Clark Point Lookout Branson Downtown Taney County . . ." in an attempt to be specific, and use a shorter name on subsequent calls.

Facilities and aircraft

M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport covers an area of 40

acre The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial and US customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one chain by one furlong (66 by 660 feet), which is exactly equal to 10 square chains, of a square mile, 4,840 square ...

s (16 ha) at an

elevation The elevation of a geographic 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 surface (see Geodetic datum § ...

of 940 feet (287 m) above

mean sea level There are several kinds of mean in mathematics, especially in statistics. Each mean serves to summarize a given group of data, often to better understand the overall value ( magnitude and sign) of a given data set. For a data set, the '' ...

. It has one

runway According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a runway is a "defined rectangular area on a land aerodrome prepared for the landing and takeoff of aircraft". Runways may be a man-made surface (often asphalt, concrete ...

designated 12/30 with an

asphalt Asphalt, also known as bitumen (, ), is a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product, and is classed as a pitch. Before the 20th century, the term ...

surface measuring 3,738 by 100 feet (1,139 x 30 m). A GPS Approach is published and the runway provides both Medium Intensity Runway Lights (MIRL) and Runway End Identifier Lights (REIL). For the 12-month period ending December 31, 2011, the airport had 11,200 aircraft operations, an average of 30 per day: 96%

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

, 4%

air taxi An air taxi is a small commercial aircraft that makes short flights on demand. In 2001 air taxi operations were promoted in the United States by a NASA and aerospace industry study on the potential Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) ...

, and <1%

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

. At that time there were 68 aircraft based at this airport: 78% 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 ...

, 13% multi-engine, 2% jet, and 7%

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attribu ...

. The FBO is operated by the Taney County Airport Board. Repair services are available from Branson Aircraft Repair, LLC. Helicopter charter, touring, and flight training are offered, as well.

General aviation traffic

Clark Field has at times been one of the busiest general aviation airports in the region. It was at one time ranked the fourth busiest airport by number of aircraft operations in the state of Missouri behind

Lambert-St. Louis International Airport St. Louis Lambert International Airport is the primary commercial airport serving metropolitan St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Commonly referred to as Lambert Field or simply Lambert, it is the largest and busiest airport in the state of ...

Kansas City Downtown Airport Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport is a city-owned, public-use airport serving Kansas City, Missouri. Located in Clay County, this facility is included in the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems, which categorized it as a general aviat ...

, and Spirit of St. Louis Airport, outranking

Kansas City International Airport Kansas City International Airport (originally Mid-Continent International Airport) is a public airport in Kansas City, Missouri located northwest of Downtown Kansas City in Platte County, Missouri., effective December 30, 2021. The airport ...

and Springfield-Branson National Airport. The airport serves helicopter operations. Also, there is a substantial antique airplane collector on the field and the field is popular with other operators flying aircraft without radios. There is no control tower as it is an uncontrolled field. It is not uncommon for there to be several aircraft in the pattern at the same time.

Prevailing winds

The direction of the prevailing winds are typically from the north or from the southwest. The runway was constructed west-northwest and east-southeast due to the terrain, creating a prevailing crosswind. This "built-in crosswind" was considered a desired attribute when the airport was used to train pilots, allowing them to obtain extensive crosswind procedure training, although there were several relatively minor crosswind accidents.

2011 runway changes

Around March 10, 2011, the runway numbers at M. Graham Clark Field were changed from 11/29 to 12/30.

Incidents

This airport was free of any fatal accident history for several decades, but there have been a few fatal accidents associated with the field in recent years, including: * A CitationJet (Cessna-525, or CJ1) crashed on approach to the airport in winter 1999. Approach Control had lost radar contact with the aircraft at 2,100 feet msl five miles from the airport. The crash occurred on a mountaintop about four miles west of the airport at about 1,100 feet msl "within 50 feet of the centerline of the instrument approach" but at an altitude several hundred feet below what was specified for that portion of the approach. There was significant public controversy associated with this accident. The aircraft was owned by the College of the Ozarks (which owned the airport at the time) and six employees and students of the college were killed. The pilot was also the airport manager and an administrator associated with the aviation science department of the college. Pilot fatigue was cited as a factor in the accident by the NTSB, possibly aggravated by toxicological factors and an alleged "feud" that the pilot was having with the FAA in the days leading up to the accident. It is thought that this accident was a factor in the decision by the college to phase out its aviation science department and donate the airport to the county. * A Piper Cherokee Six (PA-32) based in Texas crashed in a ravine and burned, killing all five occupants, after a balked take-off that overran the east end of the field in 2004. * A

Piper PA-34 Seneca The Piper PA-34 Seneca is a twin-engined light aircraft, produced in the United States by Piper Aircraft. It has been in non-continuous production since 1971. The Seneca is primarily used for personal and business flying. Development The Senec ...

also based in Texas crashed and burned after departure a few miles from the field (thought to be attempting to return to the airport for unknown reasons) in low weather, killing all four occupants, in 2006. * A homebuilt Tri-Q2 from Florida crashed shortly after departing the field in 2006. The cause was thought to be due to structural problems with the aircraft. Other incidents at the airport include: * On January 12, 2014,

Southwest Airlines Southwest Airlines Co., typically referred to as Southwest, is one of the major airlines of the United States and the world's largest low-cost carrier. It is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and has scheduled service to 121 destinations in the U ...

flight 4013 from

Midway Airport Chicago Midway International Airport , typically referred to as Midway Airport, Chicago Midway, or simply Midway, is a major commercial airport on the Southwest side of Chicago, Illinois, located approximately 12 miles (19 km) from the Lo ...

in Chicago, a

Boeing 737-700 The Boeing 737 Next Generation, commonly abbreviated as 737NG, or 737 Next Gen, is a narrow-body aircraft powered by two jet engines and produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Launched in 1993 as the third generation derivative of the Boeing ...

, landed at Clark Field (on Runway 12) apparently in error instead of at the nearby

(on Runway 14). The runway at Clark Field is only 3,738 feet in length, more than 3,000 feet shorter than the runway at the intended airport. The Boeing 737 carried 124 passengers and 5 crew members, and it was reported to have landed "safely and without incident". The aircraft was able to take off again the next day, after all passenger seats were removed and the aircraft was fueled minimally for a nearby Southwest facility.

References

External links

M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport
* at

Missouri DOT The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT, ) is a state government organization in charge of maintaining public roadways of the U.S. state of Missouri under the guidance of the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission. MoDOT designs, ...

Airport Directory
Aerial image as of April 1996
from

USGS The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, ...

The National Map ''The National Map'' is a 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 effort is to prov ...

'' * * {{US-airport-minor, PLK, PLK, KPLK Airports in Missouri Buildings and structures in Taney County, Missouri College of the Ozarks