South Texas Regional Airport at Hondo 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 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 at t ...

s (4 km) northwest 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 Hondo, a city in

Medina County, Texas Medina County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 50,748. Its county seat is Hondo. The county is named for the Medina River. The extreme northern part of the county lies within the Edw ...

, United States. It is owned by the City of Hondo and was formerly known as Hondo Municipal Airport. This airport 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 general-aviation facility.

Facilities and aircraft

South Texas Regional Airport at Hondo covers an area of 2,400

acre The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...

s (971 ha) 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 930 feet (283 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 four

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: 8/26 is 3,451 by 75 feet (1,052 x 23 m), 13/31 is 5,545 by 150 feet (1,690 x 46 m), 17L/35R is 6,002 by 100 feet (1,829 x 30 m), and 17R/35L is 3,224 by 140 feet (983 x 43 m). Runway 17L/35R has 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 ...

pavement and the remaining three runways have a

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of aggregate bound together with a fluid cement that cures to a solid over time. It is the second-most-used substance (after water), the most–widely used building material, and the most-manufactur ...

surface. For the 12-month period ending May 31, 2023, the airport had 25,000 general-aviation aircraft operations, an average of 68 per day. At that time, 76 aircraft were based at this airport: 66 single- engined, five multi-engined, and one jet airplanes, and four

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 ...

, .

History

Hondo Army Air Field

The airport has its origins in 1942 with the establishment by the Army Air Corps of Hondo Army Air Field, and was used as a navigator training base. The

Women Airforce Service Pilots The Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) (also Women's Army Service Pilots or Women's Auxiliary Service Pilots) was a civilian women pilots' organization, whose members were United States federal civil service employees. Members of WASP became t ...

(WASPs) squadrons were assigned there in November 1943. Two notable woman pilots, Betty Henrich and Hollywood stunt actress Mary Wiggins, were among the first WASPs to report for duty. Between July 1942 and August 1945, some 14,158 navigators were trained at Hondo. The base was closed on December 29, 1945, and the buildings and fixtures were sold as surplus. Between 1945 and 1951, civilian operators such as the Hollaway Flying School trained student pilots at the former base under the GI Bill.

Hondo Air Base

On June 5, 1950, as a result of the

Korean War The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK) and their allies. North Korea was s ...

, the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...

reactivated the base as Hondo Air Base, and it served as a contract pilot-training center. It closed again in 1958. During the 1960s, the city of Hondo leased facilities at the base to the Hondo Livestock Auction and to Gary Aerospace, Universal Rundle, and Doss Aviation. The aviation companies worked with the Air Force to screen pilots, and Universal Rundle manufactured bathroom products. In 1957, a golf course was constructed on the base through the efforts of base commander Lieutenant Colonel Earl V. Riley. A golf tournament bearing his name remained a yearly event in the 1980s. In the spring of 1973, the Air Force began a flight-screening program at Hondo using the

T-41 Mescalero The Cessna T-41 Mescalero is a military version of the popular Cessna 172, operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) and United States Army, Army, as well as the armed forces of various other countries as a Trainer (aircraft), pilot-training ...

, a militarized version of the civilian Cessna 172. The training program, still in operation in the 1980s, was attended by United States and foreign students. After the mid-1970s, the base housed a number of businesses, including a fiberglass-products plant, a greenhouse, a National Guard armory, and the Medina Electric Cooperative.Thole, Lou (1999), Forgotten Fields of America : World War II Bases and Training, Then and Now - Volume 2. Publisher: Pictorial Histories Pub,

References

External links

Aerial photo as of January 1995
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 ...