First Flight Airport is a public use airport located west of the central business district of
Kill Devil Hills, a town in
Dare County, North Carolina, United States.
The airport is owned by the
U.S. National Park Service.
It is included in the
National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2011–2015, which
categorized it as a ''
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 ...
'' facility.
[
]
The airport itself is famous for being the site of hundreds of pre-flight gliding experiments carried out by the
Wright brothers
The Wright brothers, Orville Wright (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur Wright (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912), were American aviation List of aviation pioneers, pioneers generally credited with inventing, building, and flyin ...
. The
Wright Brothers National Memorial, located atop nearby Kill Devil Hill, is a 60-foot
granite
Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...
pylon paying homage to the Wright Brothers and the first sustained heavier-than-air flight.
The U.S.
Centennial of Flight Commission also chose the airport as one of the stops for the National Air Tour 2003.
History
On December 17, 1903, the first successful powered heavier-than-air aircraft flight occurred here, conducted by the Wright brothers.
Facilities and aircraft
First Flight Airport covers an area of 40 acres (16
ha) at an elevation of 13 feet (4 m) above
mean sea level
A mean is a quantity representing the "center" of a collection of numbers and is intermediate to the extreme values of the set of numbers. There are several kinds of means (or "measures of central tendency") in mathematics, especially in statist ...
. It has one
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, ...
designated 3/21 with an
asphalt surface measuring . For the 12-month period ending April 18, 2018, the airport had 37,500 aircraft operations, an average of about 103 per day: 99% general aviation and 1%
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 ...
.
See also
*
List of airports in North Carolina
References
External links
U.S. National Park Service: Wright Brothers National Memorial* at
North Carolina DOT airport guide
Aerial image as of March 1993from
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''
{{Outer Banks
Airports in North Carolina
Airports established in 1903
Transportation in Dare County, North Carolina
Buildings and structures in Dare County, North Carolina
Outer Banks
National Park Service areas in North Carolina
1903 establishments in North Carolina