Cold Bay Airport is a state 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 Cold Bay, a city in the Aleutians East Borough of the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...

. First built as a

United States Army Air Forces The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

airfield during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, it is one of the main airports serving the

Alaska Peninsula The Alaska Peninsula (also called Aleut Peninsula or Aleutian Peninsula, ; Sugpiaq language, Sugpiaq: ''Aluuwiq'', ''Al'uwiq'') is a peninsula extending about to the southwest from the mainland of Alaska and ending in the Aleutian Islands. T ...

. Scheduled passenger service is available and

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 ...

operators fly in and out of the airport daily. Formerly, the airport operated as Thornbrough Air Force Base. According to

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 9,105 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, 8,968 enplanements in 2009, and 9,261 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 2011–2015, which categorized it as a "non-primary commercial service" airport, meaning it has between 2,500 and 10,000 enplanements per year. Cold Bays main runway is the fifth-largest in Alaska and was built during

. Today, it is used for scheduled cargo flights by

Alaska Central Express Alaska Central Express is an airline based at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport in Anchorage, Alaska, United States. It is a cargo and small package express service. History The airline was established as Yutana Airlines in 1987 and ...

and is sometimes used as an emergency diversion airport for passenger flights crossing the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

. A myth describes Cold Bay Airport as an alternate landing site for

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable launch system, reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. ...

s, but the

National Aeronautics and Space Administration The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the United States's civil space program, aeronautics research and space research. Established in 1958, it su ...

(NASA) has stated that it was never so designated, and it was not within the entry crossrange capability of Space Shuttles. There is a

National Weather Service The National Weather Service (NWS) is an Government agency, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that is tasked with providing weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weathe ...

(NWS) office (which sends up

radiosonde A radiosonde is a battery-powered telemetry instrument carried into the atmosphere usually by a weather balloon that measures various atmospheric parameters and transmits them by radio to a ground receiver. Modern radiosondes measure or calculat ...

balloons twice a day) colocated with the FAA Flight Service Station at the airport. The NWS ranks Cold Bay as the cloudiest city in the United States.

History

The airport was constructed during

as Fort Randall Army Airfield, eventually becoming an Air Force base during the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

Facilities and aircraft

Cold Bay Airport covers 2,213 acres (896 ha) and 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: 15/33 is 10,180 by 150 feet (3,174 x 46 m) and 8/26 is 4,900 by 150 feet (1,494 x 46 m). For the 12-month period ending October 30, 2017, the airport had 9,090 aircraft operations, an average of 25 per day: 63%

, 30% scheduled commercial, 5%

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 ...

, and 2%

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 ...

Airlines and destinations

The following

airline An airline is a company that provides civil aviation, air transport services for traveling passengers or freight (cargo). Airlines use aircraft to supply these services and may form partnerships or Airline alliance, alliances with other airlines ...

s offer scheduled passenger service at this airport:

Historical airline service

Reeve Aleutian Airways Reeve Aleutian Airways was an airline headquartered in Anchorage, Alaska, Anchorage, Alaska, United States. It ceased operations on December 5, 2000. Reeve Aleutian was named, possibly as a pun on the word revolution, by combining founder Rober ...

(RAA) served Cold Bay with scheduled passenger flights for many years. During the 1970s and 1980s, Reeve was operating nonstop flights to

Anchorage Anchorage, officially the Municipality of Anchorage, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Alaska. With a population of 291,247 at the 2020 census, it contains nearly 40 percent of the state's population. The Anchorage metropolita ...

(ANC) with

Lockheed L-188 Electra The Lockheed L-188 Electra is an American turboprop airliner built by Lockheed Corporation, Lockheed. First flown in 1957, it was the first large turboprop airliner built in the United States. With its fairly high power-to-weight ratio, huge pro ...

and

NAMC YS-11 The NAMC YS-11 is a turboprop airliner designed and built by the Nihon Aircraft Manufacturing Corporation (NAMC), a Japanese consortium. It was the only post-war airliner to be wholly designed and manufactured in Japan until the development of t ...

turboprop aircraft. Reeve was also operating Electra propjet service nonstop to

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

(SEA) on a three flights per week schedule in 1979. By 1989, the airline had introduced nonstop jet service to Anchorage operated with

Boeing 727-100 The Boeing 727 is an American narrow-body airliner that was developed and produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. After the heavier 707 quad-jet was introduced in 1958, Boeing addressed the demand for shorter flight lengths from smaller airp ...

combi aircraft Combi aircraft in commercial aviation are aircraft that can be used to carry either passengers as an airliner, or cargo as a freighter, and may have a partition in the aircraft cabin to allow both uses at the same time in a mixed passenger/fre ...

which were capable of transporting both passengers and freight on the main deck of the aircraft in addition to continuing to operate nonstop Electra service to Anchorage as well. Reeve was continuing to operate 727 jet service nonstop to Anchorage during the late 1990s before ceasing all flight operations in 2000.http://www.departedflights.com, June 1, 1999 Official Airline Guide (OAG), Anchorage flight schedules From 2020 until the summer of 2021, Alaska Airlines flights to and from Adak would stop in Cold Bay to assist passengers with the shutdown of commuter flights from Anchorage to Cold Bay and Unalaska.

Statistics

Top destinations

Airline market share

Accidents and incidents

* *

References

External links

* *
FAA Alaska airport diagram
(

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , ) is a Raster graphics, bitmap Image file formats, image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released ...

)
Topographic map
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 ...

'' * ;Military history
The Thousand Mile War
{{Airports in Alaska Airports in Aleutians East Borough, Alaska Alaska Peninsula