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Jehonville Air Base, also known as Bertrix Air Base, is a NATO reserve airfield in the Belgian Ardennes, some 4 km north of the town of Bertrix in Wallonia. Built in the late 1950s to a NATO dispersal plan and once home to a Royal Canadian Air Force Sabre and Starfighter squadron, it now sees only occasional military training use and is home to the Belgian Air Cadets, giving it a quiet, historic character for the visiting simulator pilot.
Jehonville Air Base, better known locally as Bertrix Air Base, is a Belgian Air Force-owned NATO reserve airfield in the Ardennes region of Wallonia, close to the town of Bertrix. It has no regular flying operations today but remains an active military property, used intermittently for training and gliding, and it is the home site of the Belgian Air Cadets. For a sim pilot the appeal lies in its Cold War pedigree as a former Royal Canadian Air Force dispersal base and its long single runway set amid Ardennes forest, offering a low-traffic, historically rich destination away from the busier Belgian fields.
The airfield lies in Wallonia, roughly 4 km north of Bertrix in Luxembourg Province, in the hilly, forested terrain of the Belgian Ardennes. It sits within the Brussels FIR. No communications or navigation frequencies are published for the field, and it should be treated as an uncontrolled reserve military airfield with no routine ATC presence.
Jehonville has a single physical runway, 06/24, with a hard surface and a length of 7,837 ft (2,389 m) in each direction as recorded for the field. Historical accounts describe the runway as built to NATO standard length of 2,400 m and later extended by 200 m at each end to around 2,800 m, though the current listed length is somewhat shorter; there is no ILS installed.
No communications frequencies are published for Jehonville Air Base, and it is not equipped with an ILS. Pilots planning a visit should expect no radio service and treat any approach as a self-announced, uncontrolled operation within the surrounding airspace structure.
No published circuit heights, joining instructions or noise abatement procedures are available for this airfield. Given its status as a reserve military base with no regular flying operations, any visiting or overflying pilot should exercise caution and expect the field to be largely inactive outside occasional training exercises.
The base is readily identified by its long single runway oriented northeast-southwest amid Ardennes woodland, with a substantial ammunition storage complex on the northeast side of the runway and a distinctive railway station, aligned with the runway, about a kilometre to the south, which connects to the national rail network roughly two kilometres further south. Two medium-sized hangars are located on the west side of the airfield.
Jehonville was constructed in 1958 at NATO's request under Military Committee plan MC 60, which sought to disperse allied air forces across Europe to reduce vulnerability to a surprise mass aerial attack and preserve a retaliatory capability. It was one of four dispersal airfields assigned to No. 422 Squadron of the Royal Canadian Air Force's 1 Canadian Air Division, becoming operational on 29 August 1958 following a Belgium-Canada agreement signed the same day, with flying operations beginning on 31 December 1958 even though construction continued into the following year. Built to the NATO standard length of 2,400 metres, the runway was later extended by 200 metres at each end to about 2,800 metres. The RCAF's 422 Squadron used Bertrix as a deployed operating base, flying Canadair Sabres and, from 1963, Canadair CF-104 Starfighters, supported by a small security detachment. Following France's 1966 withdrawal from NATO's integrated military command and the expulsion of foreign forces from French soil, the RCAF gave notice and departed Bertrix, handing the airfield back to the Belgian Armed Forces after reducing its security presence. In 1991 the United States Army built an ammunition depot on the base's eastern side, which was returned to Belgian control in 1994 and is now managed by the 260th Ammunitions Company based nearby.
Jehonville remains the property of the Air Component of the Belgian Armed Forces, though it has no regular flying operations. It is used from time to time for military training, including night helicopter exercises and tactical landing training for the Airbus A400M Atlas, and it also serves as a base for gliding activity by the Belgian Air Cadets. As an active military reserve airfield, prior permission would be required for any visit, and pilots should not expect fuel, published hours or routine facilities associated with civilian aerodromes.
