Vista Field was 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 ...

Benton County, Washington Benton County is a County (United States), county in the south-central portion of the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, its population was 206,873. The county seat is Prosser, Wash ...

, United States. The airport was located 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 ...

Kennewick Kennewick () is a city in Benton County, Washington, Benton County in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington. It is located along the southwest bank of the Columbia River, just southeast of the confluence of the Columbia and Yakima ...

and was owned by the Port of Kennewick. It was also known as Vista Field Airport. Several shipping carriers operated out of the airport. There had been controversy in recent years over whether or not to continue to operate the airport or to shut it down; it was officially closed on December 31, 2013, due to operating costs. The Port of Kennewick plans to redevelop the site into a

mixed-use Mixed use is a type of urban development, urban design, urban planning and/or a zoning classification that blends multiple uses, such as residential, commercial, cultural, institutional, or entertainment, into one space, where those functions ...

residential and commercial neighborhood with parks and plazas. Several streets were laid in the early 2020s ahead of property sales for development. 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 ...

in the 1940s, it was an auxiliary field for nearby Naval Air Station Pasco, training

naval aviators A navy, naval force, military maritime fleet, war navy, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operation ...

. The Port of Kennewick acquired the airport in 1991. The Toyota Center arena, opened in 1988 as the Tri-Cities Coliseum, is adjacent to the northwest.

Facilities and aircraft

Vista Field covered 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 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 had one

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, ...

designated 2/20 which measured , with a width of . It formerly had a T-configuration, with a perpendicular runway of to the northwest. For the 12-month period ending June 30, 2007, the airport had 45,000

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 ...

aircraft operations, an average of 123 per day. At that time there were 35 aircraft based at this airport: 86% 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 ...

, 11% multi-engine and 3%

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 ...

References

External links

Vista Field
at

WSDOT The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT or WashDOT, both ) is a governmental agency that constructs, maintains, and regulates the use of transportation infrastructure in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington. Establi ...

Pilot's Guide * , more information from WSDOT * {{US-airport-minor, S98 Defunct airports in Washington (state) Transportation buildings and structures in Benton County, Washington Tri-Cities, Washington Kennewick, Washington Airfields of the United States Navy Military installations closed in the 1940s 2013 disestablishments in Washington (state) Closed installations of the United States Navy

Facilities and aircraft

See also

References

External links