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Port Hawkesbury Airport (CYPD), also known today as the Allan J. MacEachen Port Hawkesbury Airport, sits just north of the town of Port Hawkesbury on the Nova Scotia mainland, close to the Canso Causeway gateway to Cape Breton Island. It offers a single long hard-surfaced runway and is of particular interest to visiting pilots for its role as a business and private-jet gateway to the Strait region and western Cape Breton.
Port Hawkesbury Airport, now more formally titled the Allan J. MacEachen Port Hawkesbury Airport, is a registered aerodrome serving the Strait of Canso area of Nova Scotia. It was established in the 1970s at the instigation of the long-serving federal politician Allan J. MacEachen as a year-round air gateway for western Cape Breton Island and the surrounding Strait Region, and it continues to fulfil that role today, chiefly as a base for business and private aviation rather than scheduled airline services.
The airfield lies in Port Hastings, Inverness County, roughly 2.1 nautical miles north of the town of Port Hawkesbury and about 5 km from the Strait of Canso Causeway, the principal road and sea link onto Cape Breton Island. The location was deliberately chosen to give convenient air access to the "Quad Counties" of Antigonish, Guysborough, Inverness and Richmond as well as the Town of Port Hawkesbury itself.
The airfield has a single physical runway, 11/29, with a hard surface measuring 4,968 feet in length. Both runway directions are lit.
Pilots can expect to work Halifax Radio on 126.7 MHz, with 122.8 MHz serving as the aerodrome traffic frequency and unicom. There is no ILS at the field.
As an uncontrolled aerodrome, Port Hawkesbury relies on pilots self-announcing on the aerodrome traffic frequency of 122.8 MHz rather than on air traffic control instructions; no published circuit heights or noise abatement procedures are given in the available material.
The airfield's position close to the Strait of Canso Causeway, the main crossing point onto Cape Breton Island, makes the causeway and the town of Port Hawkesbury to the south useful visual references when approaching from the surrounding area.
The airport's origins lie in the vision of Allan J. MacEachen, a prominent federal Liberal politician and senator from Nova Scotia, who in the early 1970s pushed for a year-round, twenty-four-hour air gateway to serve and attract industry to western Cape Breton and the Strait Region. Hector MacInnis, long-time Deputy Mayor of Port Hawkesbury, also played a significant part in the airport's early and ongoing development, working with officials from the Counties of Inverness and Richmond on its governance. The field operated for decades as Port Hawkesbury Airport before flight activity reportedly grew substantially over six years, prompting the Town of Port Hawkesbury to contract its operation to Celtic Air Services from July 2017. Later that year the town council voted to rename the airport in honour of MacEachen, who had died in 2017 at the age of 96. In May 2018 the airfield hosted Airshow Cape Breton, at which the Royal Canadian Air Force Snowbirds performed before large crowds, marking a notable moment in the airport's history.
The airport continues to operate as a joint venture funded by the Town of Port Hawkesbury, the Municipality of the County of Inverness and the Municipality of the County of Richmond, with day-to-day operations run under contract by Celtic Air Services since 2017. It serves primarily business and private jet traffic for the Strait Region and western Cape Breton, and avgas is available on the field. Governance and future development, including possible expansion of the airport committee to include First Nations and neighbouring municipalities, remain under ongoing discussion.
