Frankfort Dow Memorial Field is a 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 two nautical miles (3.7 km) southeast of the

central business district A central business district (CBD) is the Commerce, commercial and business center 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 wit ...

of Frankfort, a city in

Benzie County Benzie County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 census, the population was 17,970. The county seat is Beulah. The county was initially set off in 1863 and organized in 1869.

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. It is owned by the Frankfort City-County Airport Authority. It is included in the

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)

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 2017–2021, in which it is categorized 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. Although many U.S. airports use the same three-letter

location identifier A location identifier is a symbolic representation for the name and the location of an airport, navigation aid, or weather station, and is used for staffed air traffic control facilities in air traffic control, telecommunications, computer program ...

for the FAA and

IATA The International Air Transport Association (IATA ) is an airline trade association founded in 1945. IATA has been described as a cartel since, in addition to setting technical standards for airlines, IATA also organized tariff conferences tha ...

, this airport is assigned FKS by the FAA and no designation from the IATA (which assigned FKS to

Fukushima Airport is an airport in Sukagawa, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. The airport is located southeast of Kōriyama Station. It has served as the regional airport hub since its opening in 1993, the closest alternative being Sendai International Airport. F ...

Fukushima Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. Fukushima Prefecture has a population of 1,771,100 () and has a geographic area of . Fukushima Prefecture borders Miyagi Prefecture and Yamagata Prefecture ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

History

In 1937, Frankfort was identified as one of the United States' premier spots for glider flying. National soaring meets were held in the area. A flight school was established in Frankfort in the 1940s. In 2015, the airport's license was downgraded to a basic utility license when it was found there were several trees blocking the runway approaches, taxiway reflectors were missing, runway markings were poor, the windsock was torn and faded, and there were snowplow divots in the end safety area on one of the runways. This made the airport uneligible for grants under the capital improvement plan. The license wasn't upgraded back to a general utility license until later that fall. In 2016, a 20-year airport layout plan calling for the acquisition of several adjacent parcels of land was adopted by the airport. This would help the airport clear nearby farmland of obstructions that protrude into approach paths. The airport's management has faced claims of discrimination in recent years, with former board members saying they were wrongly removed from their posts and

hangar A hangar is a building or structure designed to hold aircraft or spacecraft. Hangars are built of metal, wood, or concrete. The word ''hangar'' comes from Middle French ''hanghart'' ("enclosure near a house"), of Germanic origin, from Frankish ...

renters saying their fees have unreasonably increased. In 2017, a complaint was filed with the Michigan Department of Transportation.

Facilities and aircraft

Frankfort Dow Memorial Field covers an area of at an

elevation The elevation of a geographic location (geography), ''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 equipotenti ...

of 633 feet (193 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 15/33 with an

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 ...

surface measuring 4,050 by 75 feet (1,234 x 23 m). The airport is staffed from 8AM until 5PM. The airport has a

fixed-base operator A fixed-base operator (FBO) is an organization granted the right by an airport to operate at the airport and provide aeronautical services such as fueling, hangaring, tie-down, and parking, aircraft rental, aircraft maintenance, flight instruction ...

that offers

fuel A fuel is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases energy as thermal energy or to be used for work (physics), work. The concept was originally applied solely to those materials capable of releasing chem ...

, general maintenance,

hangars A hangar is a building or structure designed to hold aircraft or spacecraft. Hangars are built of metal, wood, or concrete. The word ''hangar'' comes from Middle French ''hanghart'' ("enclosure near a house"), of Germanic origin, from Frankish ...

, a

conference room A conference hall, conference room, or meeting room is a room provided for singular events such as business conferences and meetings. Room It is commonly found at large hotels and convention centers though many other establishments, including even ...

, a crew lounge, snooze rooms, and more. For the 12-month period ending December 31, 2020, the airport had 4,000

aircraft operations, an average of 77 per week. At that time there were 19 aircraft based at this airport: 17 single-engine

airplanes An airplane (American English), or aeroplane (Commonwealth English), informally plane, is a fixed-wing aircraft that is propelled forward by thrust from a jet engine, propeller, or rocket engine. Airplanes come in a variety of sizes, shapes, ...

, 1

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which Lift (force), lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning Helicopter rotor, rotors. This allows the helicopter to VTOL, take off and land vertically, to hover (helicopter), hover, and ...

, and 1 glider.

Transit

The airport is accessible by road from Airport Rd, and is close to

M-22 M-22 are a British-German DJ and producer duo consisting of Matt James and Frank Sanders. On March 22, the duo met, through a joint production, which is the reason for their stage name. History On March 22, 2015, the duo met during a joint ...

and M-115.

Accidents and incidents

*On August 8, 2004, a Cessna 305A on a glider-tow flight impacted terrain after takeoff from Dow Memorial. The Cessna pilot reported the glider was released from the tow line while on the takeoff run, and the tow plane yawed left and veered off the takeoff path, then crossing a

marsh In ecology, a marsh is a wetland that is dominated by herbaceous plants rather than by woody plants.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p More in genera ...

southwest of the runway. The pilot said that the engine was at full power but the plane was still at minimum controllable airspeed. The probable cause was found to be the tow pilot's failure to maintain directional control during takeoff as well as his failure to abort the takeoff. Additionally, the tow pilot failed to attain adequate airspeed which resulted in a stall. *On July 31, 2009, a Cessna 337F Skymaster impacted trees and terrain after takeoff from Dow Memorial. A witness also preparing to depart from the airport said the pilot had the cowlings off the rear engine of the accident aircraft to fix an oil leak. The pilot planned to feather that engine and depart with only the front engine. The probable cause was found to be the pilot intentionally attempting to take off with an inoperative engine, which lead to the airplane's inability to maintain airspeed in the initial climb, resulting in a stall and impact with trees. *On August 3, 2014, a Great Lakes 2T 1A 2 crashed while landing at Dow Memorial Field. During the landing flare, the aircraft landed hard and bounce, at which point its nose shifted 30 degrees from the runway. The pilot added power to go around, but the left wing dropped and impacted terrain. The probable cause of the accident was found to be the pilot's improper recovery from a bounced landing in gusty, crosswind conditions. *On July 30, 2016, an Aerostar S.A. Festival R40S crashed while landing in gusty conditions at Dow Memorial Field. The pilot reported the right wing was lifted and the aircraft drifted off the runway to the left, where it impacted terrain and its nose gear collapsed, resulting in substantial damage to the right wing. The probable cause was found to be the pilot's failure to maintain directional control during the landing roll in gusty crosswind conditions, which resulted in a runway excursion, a nose gear collapse, and impact with terrain.

References

External links

Frankfort Dow Memorial Field
* at

Michigan DOT The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) is a constitutional government principal department of the US state of Michigan. The primary purpose of MDOT is to maintain the Michigan State Trunkline Highway System which includes all Intersta ...

Airport Directory
Aerial image as of 27 April 1998
from

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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 ...