Departure
95%
vs 95% ▼ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (KDKX) is a small general aviation field on Dickinson's Island in the Tennessee River, barely half a mile east of downtown Knoxville. Operated by the Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority, it offers sim pilots a compact single-runway approach right into the heart of the city, close to the University of Tennessee's Neyland Stadium. Uncontrolled since its wartime-era tower was decommissioned, it retains a strong general aviation and flight-training character.
Knoxville Downtown Island Airport, often called Island Home Airport, is a general aviation field serving Knoxville, Tennessee, and is owned and operated by the Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority. It sits on Dickinson's Island in the Tennessee River, only about half a mile east of downtown Knoxville, giving it an unusually urban and scenic setting for a light-aircraft field. For a simulator pilot, the appeal lies in the tight island location, the single runway squeezed between the river and the city, and the airport's long and colourful history as one of Knoxville's earliest aviation sites.
The airport lies on Dickinson's Island in the Tennessee River, in Knox County, Tennessee, roughly half a mile east of downtown Knoxville and close to Neyland Stadium, home of the University of Tennessee football team. It operates as an uncontrolled field; a control tower that had operated intermittently since the Second World War, latterly staffed only for periods of expected high traffic such as Saturday football games, was closed in 2007 after asbestos contamination and later demolished. The much larger McGhee Tyson Airport, Knoxville's commercial airport, lies about twelve miles to the south.
The field has one physical runway, 08/26, oriented east-west. Runway 08 measures 3,462 feet and runway 26 measures 3,461 feet; both are hard-surfaced and lit, and runway 26 is equipped with an ILS.
As an uncontrolled airport, KDKX is worked on CTAF 126.6 MHz, with UNICOM available on 122.95 MHz. An Air/Ground frequency of 123.9 MHz is also published, along with a clearance delivery frequency of 121.7 MHz. Weather information is broadcast by an AWOS-3 station on 125.375 MHz. An instrument approach is available to runway 26, which is equipped with an ILS.
The airport's island setting in the Tennessee River is itself the principal visual reference, with the field sandwiched between the river and downtown Knoxville. Neyland Stadium, the University of Tennessee's football venue, sits close by and is a useful landmark for locating the field, particularly given the airport's historical link to providing air traffic control coverage during Saturday game days.
Downtown Island Airport was established in 1930 by Tom Kesterson, one of Knoxville's earliest aviators, as a makeshift private facility on Dickinson's Island with a 4,000-foot runway; he hoped it would draw commercial air services to the city. In July 1934 American Airlines began a mail route calling at the airport en route to Washington, D.C., and New York, completing the last link of the Southern Transcontinental Airway between Los Angeles and New York, and twice-daily passenger flights to Washington followed. Regular airline service to Knoxville began on 15 January 1936. Through the 1930s and 1940s the site combined aviation with farming; ownership and operation passed through several hands, including Ferris Thomas, Elmer Wood, H.F. Wattenbarger and, from the late 1940s for nearly two decades, Robert Campbell of Campbell's Aero Service. In 1943 the airport was leased for wartime training of 300 Army Air Cadets before reverting to private farming and flying use. Evelyn Johnson, later recognised by Guinness World Records for the most flying hours logged by a woman and by any living pilot, began flying at the airport in 1944, recalling that she had to travel there by rowboat. The City of Knoxville took over the airport as a public facility in 1963, and in 1978 ownership passed to the newly formed Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority, which still owns and operates it today.
KDKX functions today as a full-service fixed base operation offering fuel and other general aviation services in a relaxed operating environment, under the Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority. It supports a significant base of light aircraft, including single- and multi-engine aeroplanes, helicopters and gliders, and sees a high volume of general aviation movements, reflecting its role as a busy reliever airport for the Knoxville area. The field operates without an active control tower, the former tower cab having been demolished after closure in 2007.
