Wendover Airport is a county-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 one

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 ...

(2 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 ...

Wendover Wendover is a town and civil parish at the foot of the Chiltern Hills in Buckinghamshire, England. It is situated at the point where the main road across the Chilterns between London and Aylesbury intersects with the once important road along t ...

, a city on the western edge of

Tooele County Tooele County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of Utah. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 72,698. Its county seat and largest city is Tooele. The county was created in 1850 and organized the following year. Tooele Coun ...

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

, United States, near the border with

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...

Description

The 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 ''primary commercial service'' airport. As per

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 ...

records, the airport had 46,264 passenger boardings (enplanements) in

calendar year A calendar year begins on the New Year's Day of the given calendar system and ends on the day before the following New Year's Day, and thus consists of a whole number of days. The Gregorian calendar year, which is in use as civil calendar in ...

2008, 50,360 enplanements in 2009, and 50,734 in 2010. In 2019, the last full year of charter service by Swift Air, ENV logged 52,748 passenger boardings before dropping to 10,824 in 2020, after which charter service ceased.

History

Military

The Wendover Airport is located at the site of the former

Wendover Air Force Base Wendover Air Force Base is a former United States Air Force base in Utah now known as Wendover Airport. During World War II, it was a training base for B-17 and B-24 bomber crews. It was the training site of the 509th Composite Group, the ...

, which ceased most military operations in the mid-1960s.

Civilian

Wendover AAF was declared surplus in 1976 and on June 16 most of the field, including the water system, was turned over to Wendover, Utah, as a municipal airport. Beginning in 1980, the 4440th Tactical Fighter Training Group (Red Flag) at

Nellis AFB Nellis Air Force Base ("Nellis" colloq.) is a United States Air Force installation in southern Nevada. Nellis hosts air combat exercises such as Exercise Red Flag and close air support exercises such as Green Flag-West flown in " Military ...

, Nevada, used the field for exercises, but they were discontinued after 1986. In the late 1990s the airport's ownership was transferred from the city of Wendover to Tooele County. Still-extant facilities include three paved runways, numerous ramps, taxiways, dispersal pads, all of the original hangars (including the "Enola Gay" B-29 hangar), and 75 other World War II–era buildings. Several flying scenes for the 1997 movie ''

Con Air ''Con Air'' is a 1997 American action thriller film directed by Simon West and starring Nicolas Cage, John Cusack and John Malkovich in the lead roles. Written by Scott Rosenberg and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the film centers on a pr ...

'' were filmed at Wendover, using a

Fairchild C-123K Provider The Fairchild C-123 Provider is an American military transport aircraft designed by Chase Aircraft and built by Fairchild Aircraft for the U.S. Air Force. In addition to its USAF service, which included later service with the Air Force Reserve an ...

. A non-profit group,

Historic Wendover Airfield The Historic Wendover Airfield is an aviation museum located at Wendover Airport in Wendover, Utah focused on the history of Wendover Air Force Base. History Background Due to the remote location and favorable climate, many of the buildings ...

, is attempting to restore the historic elements of the field. The airport received a $1.2 million grant from the

to resurface its runways in September 2002. As a result of a federal grant and donations by local casinos the airport acquired a new

fire truck A fire engine or fire truck (also spelled firetruck) is a vehicle, usually a specially designed or modified truck, that functions as a firefighting apparatus. The primary purposes of a fire engine include transporting firefighters and water t ...

in 2013.

Facilities and aircraft

Wendover Airport covers an area of 1,960

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 (793 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 4,237 feet (1,291 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 two

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 with

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 ...

surfaces: 8/26 is 10,002 by 150 feet (3,049 x 46 m) and 12/30 is 8,002 by 100 feet (2,439 x 30 m). For the 12-month period ending March 31, 2023, the airport had 4,586 aircraft operations, an average of 88 per week: 83%

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 ...

, and 18%

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: 2 jet and 1 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 ...

. The airport is an

uncontrolled airport In aviation, a non-towered airport is an airport without a control tower, or air traffic control (ATC) unit. In the United States, there are close to 20,000 non-towered airports compared to approximately 500 airports with control towers. Airports ...

that has no control tower.

Airlines and destinations

As of February 2022, there are no scheduled airline service to Wendover.

Swift Air iAero Airways, previously named ''Swift Air'', was an American charter airline based in Greensboro, North Carolina with its main hub at Miami International Airport.Flight International 12–18 April 2005 The airline announced that it would ceas ...

offered charter flights to various cities across the United States and Canada from Wendover using

Boeing 737-800 The Boeing 737 Next Generation, commonly abbreviated as 737NG, or 737 Next Gen, is a twinjet, twin-engine narrow-body aircraft produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Launched in 1993 as the third-generation derivative of the Boeing 737, it ha ...

and

Boeing 737-400 The Boeing 737 Classic is a series of narrow-body airliners produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes, the second generation of the Boeing 737 series of aircraft. Development began in 1979 and the first variant, the 737-300, first flew in Febru ...

aircraft, as part of a package deal to bring tourists to local casinos. However, these charter flights were discontinued during the 2020 covid pandemic and as of 2023 have not resumed, leaving the passenger terminal vacant.

References

External links

Historic Wendover Airfield

Aerial image as of September 1993
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 ...

'' * * * {{authority control Airports in Utah Buildings and structures in Tooele County, Utah Government buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Utah Transportation buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Utah Airports on the National Register of Historic Places Transportation in Tooele County, Utah National Register of Historic Places in Tooele County, Utah