Spence Airport is a city-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 four

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 (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 Moultrie, Colquitt County,

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

, United States. The airport serves the

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 ...

community, with no scheduled

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

service.

History

The City of Moultrie gained its first official municipal airport, Clark Field, in the 1930s. In 1940, local leaders, aware of the Federal government's airport building program, formed a committee to represent the community. The committee then contacted the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) about the possibility of acquiring a modern CAA built airport at Moultrie. The CAA, receptive to the idea, informed the committee that once the local government provided the land the Federal government would fund the building of an airfield. Due to the impossibility of expanding Clark Field for a modern airport, Moultrie and Colquitt County then took an option on a tract of land northeast of the city. When the committee members learned the Army planned on establishing additional training bases in the Southeast, they traveled to Maxwell AAF,

Alabama Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gu ...

to secure an Air Corps airfield on the site. Air Corps engineers came to Moultrie in March 1941. After inspecting the first site, they selected a more desirable site five miles (8 km) southeast of the city. In June, after the War Department approved the second site, Moultrie and Colquitt County purchased the involved.

Military use

The airport was used for many years by the military, finally being closed as Spence Air Base.

Civil use

However, the USAF was still a presence at the civilian airport after its formal inactivation.

Moody AFB Moody Air Force Base (AFB) is a United States Air Force installation near Valdosta, Georgia. Geography The base is mostly in northeastern Lowndes County, Georgia, with a portion in Lanier County. Georgia State Route 125 runs through the west ...

in Valdosta made an agreement with the City of Moultrie to use the airfield for an Air Force auxiliary field. The Air Force extended the north¬west/southeast runway to for use by Moody's T-33 Shooting Stars, followed by its T-37 Tweets and T-38 Talons. The military use of Spence Airport continues into the current-day. Between 2000 and 2005, Spence served as an auxiliary field for the undergraduate pilot training program that was a tenant activity at Moody AFB, being used for take off and landing operations by their Raytheon T-6 Texan II turbo-prop trainers. As of 2008, Spence Airport averaged over 20 military flight operations per day. With removal of T-6 Texan II aircraft from Moody AFB, military flight operations are now limited to the occasional HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter or HC-130P Hercules. Given this reduced use by high-performance fixed-wing military aircraft, the portion of the main runway that continues to be maintained has been reduced from 8,000 to . Part of the cantonment area eventually became the Moultrie Regional Industrial Park and a county correctional institution. In 1968, Maule Aircraft built a manufacturing plant at Spence where it remains to this day. In 1978, Spence first hosted the Sunbelt Agricultural Exposition. In 2004, the Sunbelt Expo has grown into the world's largest farm show with over 1,000 exhibitors. Since many of the visitors fly to the show, Spence's old control tower is staffed during the event to control air traffic. Sunbelt Expo maintains a year-round administration center at Spence. Today, three of Spence's wartime hangars are still in existence. Other buildings built during the war also remain.

Facilities and aircraft

Spence Airport 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 292 feet (89 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 14/32 with 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 measuring 4,500 by 75 feet (1,372 x 23 m). For the 12-month period ending September 11, 2008, the airport had 18,100 aircraft operations, an average of 49 per day: 55%

and 45%

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 ...

. At that time there were 3 aircraft based at this airport: 33.3% 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 ge ...

and 66.7% multi-engine.

References

External links