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Comment by crnakfls

9 hours ago

My grandfather ran one of these airports:

https://airfields-freeman.com/CA/Airfields_CA_SanBernardino_...

The stories he would tell of that place. Drug runners landing in the night and him chasing them off with a shotgun. People constantly coming around to try and steal things. The people that would fly in to say hello. He had a real community out there. There were some sad circumstances around the end of his life that meant he couldn't run it the way it should have been run and it fell into decay. My family sold it after his passing as the cost and complexity to run such an airport so far from everything was too much (on top of none of us being pilots). It was a sad event. These days I think it's a solar farm.

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crnakfls

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bombcar  8 hours ago

I landed at that airport, it must have been soon after your grandfather passed - it wasn't NOTAM'd as closed, but the phone number had a recording that the owner had passed and it was closed - I relocated to the larger 29 Palms airport, farther from my destination. My condolences on your loss.

ryandrake  9 hours ago

It's too bad, because once these small GA airports go away, they are never coming back. Too expensive to rehab, and nobody is building new ones anymore. So ideally they should be preserved, but nobody wants to do it.

The tiny GA airfield in my home town went up for sale some time back, and the price they were asking was less than what a medium-sized Bay Area home cost. I was so tempted to find a way to make it work (equity partner?) and retire my tech job to become an airport manager. But alas, I chickened out, and some doofus bought it and is probably going to destroy it to build something stupid there. Unlikely it will remain an airport, and unlikely it will ever be sold again as a feasible rehab project.

  • bombcar  8 hours ago

    Small GA airports out in the middle of nowhere can come into being, but it's rare, and the whole GA field is aging out and disappearing (both the pilots, planes, and people).

    • Ancapistani  5 hours ago

      A big part of that is the regulatory environment. For example - I have the interest and means to get my PPL. I'd love to do so, but the FAA considers ADHD to be a disqualifying medical condition.

      4 replies →

  • mc32  6 hours ago

    Yeah, that's the problem: once they close down and the land gets sold, it will typically get developed and once that happens the land isn't coming back unless you have a Detroit situation. It's not like suburbs have lots of empty space for an approach and a strip. Even if there were, NIMBYs would prevent one from happening.