Departure
94%
vs 95% ▼ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Plum Island Airport is a small, privately owned but public-use grass and gravel airfield at Newbury, Massachusetts, close to Newburyport and the Plum Island barrier beach. Billed as New England's oldest airfield, it traces its aviation roots back over a century and today is run by a non-profit trust that both operates the field and preserves its history. For the VFR pilot it offers a quiet, historic coastal strip with a resident flight school and fuel, set against the marshes and dunes where American aviation history was made.
Plum Island Airport (2B2) lies in Newbury, Massachusetts, a short distance from the town of Newburyport on the Massachusetts North Shore. It is a privately owned, public-use general aviation airfield, owned by the heritage organisation Historic New England and operated by the non-profit Plum Island Aerodrome, Inc. The field is closely tied to the birth of aviation in New England and today combines flight training and light general aviation use with an active programme of historical preservation, making it an interesting and characterful destination for a visiting pilot.
The airport sits at Newbury, Massachusetts, about a mile southeast of Newburyport, on a compact 32-acre site near the marshes and dunes of Plum Island. It lies close to the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, with the Parker River, Plum Island Turnpike and High Road forming useful boundaries of the surrounding low-lying, marshy terrain. No specific controlled airspace detail is given in the available sources, so pilots should check current charts for the applicable airspace class before flying in the area.
Plum Island has two physical runways. Runway 15/33 is a grass strip 2,109 feet long, and runway 10/28 is a hard-surfaced strip 1,807 feet long. The field elevation is 10 feet above mean sea level. There is no ILS or other instrument approach available.
No communications frequencies are published for Plum Island Airport, and it has no instrument approach procedures. Pilots should expect an uncontrolled, non-towered field and rely on standard see-and-avoid procedures and any locally advertised advisory frequency obtained from current aeronautical publications before arrival.
Useful visual references include the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge just to the east, and the Parker River, Plum Island Turnpike and High Road, which bound the historic test-flight area used in 1910. The base of an early aviation beacon tower, which once marked the Boston-Portland air route, can still be seen at a bend in the Plum Island Turnpike near the airfield.
The story of flight in this part of Massachusetts begins about a mile and a half east of the current airport, where yacht designer W. Starling Burgess and Augustus M. Herring flew biplanes from the dunes and marshes of Plum Island between April and August 1910, using a wooden runway near where the dunes meet the marsh. The first airplane flight in New England had actually taken off from the frozen Chebacco Lake in February 1910, after which Burgess moved operations to Plum Island and built the Flying Fish, which made its first flights that April. Burgess went on to build aircraft for the Wright brothers under licence and to win the Collier Trophy in 1915. The current Plum Island Airport site was designated an Emergency Landing Field by the U.S. Army Air Service in 1926, and the Civil Aviation Administration installed a beacon tower there in the late 1920s as a navigation aid on the Boston-Portland air route; its base survives at a bend in the Plum Island Turnpike. Commercial operations began in August 1933 under Joseph Basso and W.F. Bartlett, and in May 1937 long-distance flight record holder John Polando began passenger, airmail and pilot training services at the field, later expanding facilities with partner Warren Frothingham. Three hangars, an office building, an asphalt runway and a small building beside the beacon tower were built before the Second World War; that small building later became known as the Cockpit Café. From 1940 the Civilian Pilot Training Program operated extensively at Plum Island until early 1942, when coastal airports within 25 miles of the sea were closed and training moved inland. During the war the Coast Guard used the hangars, and a mixed military-civilian group of light aircraft, likely a Civil Air Patrol unit, flew reconnaissance and offshore patrols against German U-boats along the coast; the airfield also featured in wartime film production. Polando left in 1942, and Frothingham continued running the airport for a further 24 years, adding a second, grass runway in 1946 along with an additional hangar.
Plum Island Airport is today owned by Historic New England and operated by the non-profit Plum Island Aerodrome, Inc., whose mission combines active flying operations with preservation of the airfield's historic character. Port Instrument Flight School is based at the field, offering private pilot, instrument rating and commercial training. The airport provides 100LL avgas fuelling and tiedown parking, and hosts a small aviation museum along with community events and educational tours. No published operating hours, PPR requirement or simulator scenery availability are given in the available sources.
