Departure
93%
vs 95% ▼ 2
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Bryce Canyon Airport (KBCE) is a high-elevation public-use field a few miles north of Bryce Canyon National Park in Garfield County, Utah, built in the 1930s to open up the park to air visitors. Today it sees general aviation, air taxi and scenic charter traffic, and its Works Progress Administration log hangar remains a designated National Historic Place.
Bryce Canyon Airport, identified as KBCE, lies close to Bryce Canyon National Park in southern Utah and is owned by Garfield County. It is a small, non-towered field that mixes light general aviation with air-taxi and scenic charter operations, and it carries genuine historical weight thanks to its 1930s log-built hangar, making it an interesting and slightly unusual stop for a simulator pilot exploring the high plateau country of southern Utah.
The airport sits about four miles north of Bryce Canyon itself, in Garfield County, Utah, close to both Bryce Canyon National Park and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. It is a public-use aerodrome without an operating control tower; traffic is coordinated by pilots on the field's own frequencies rather than by local ATC.
Bryce Canyon Airport has two physical runways. The main runway, 03/21, is a hard-surfaced, lit strip 7,350 ft long on runway 03 and 7,349 ft on the reciprocal 21 heading, sized to accept larger aircraft when required. A secondary runway, 12/30, is a shorter 2,672 ft grass strip with no runway lighting. The field elevation is 7,569 ft, making it one of the higher airports a simulator pilot is likely to encounter in this region.
Weather is broadcast on an ASOS at 135.475 MHz. Flight service is available on 122.2 MHz through Cedar City Radio. Airport traffic is coordinated on the CTAF/UNICOM frequency of 122.8 MHz. There is no ILS at the field.
The airport is a straightforward visual reference in its own right, lying about four miles north of the town of Bryce Canyon and within easy reach of the dramatic terrain of Bryce Canyon National Park and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, both useful landmarks when navigating toward the field from the surrounding high plateau.
The airport and its hangar were built in 1936 by Garfield County together with the Works Progress Administration, using local ponderosa pine, as a deliberate effort to bring tourism to Bryce Canyon National Park, which had been designated in 1928. The hangar is an unusual example of log construction adapted to aviation use, with a gabled roof carried on sawn wood trusses spanning 83 feet, and half-round log infill giving a half-timbered appearance; the timber still bears the marks of the beetle infestation that led to the trees being harvested. The Garfield County Airport Hangar was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. The airport has also been the scene of two notable aviation incidents: on 24 October 1947, United Airlines Flight 608, a DC-6, crashed about 1.5 miles southeast of the airport with the loss of all 52 aboard, and on 6 October 2000, American Airlines Flight 2821, an MD-82 diverted after smoke and a pressurisation problem at cruise altitude, landed safely at Bryce Canyon with 75 people on board, the runway having been built long enough to accept larger aircraft in just such an emergency.
In the twelve months to September 2023 the airport recorded 2,189 aircraft movements, the great majority general aviation with a smaller proportion of air-taxi flights. Charter and scenic-flight operators associated with the field have included Air Grand Canyon, Air Vegas, Talon Air, Grand Canyon Airlines and Westwind, reflecting the airport's role as a gateway for aerial sightseeing over Bryce Canyon and the surrounding national park and monument lands.
