Departure
94%
vs 95% ▼ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Fernandina Beach Municipal Airport (KFHB) is a city-owned, public-use general aviation field on the southern end of Amelia Island in northeastern Florida, close to the resort town's historic downtown and beaches. Built by the US Navy during the Second World War and handed to the City of Fernandina Beach in 1946, it now operates as a reliever airport for Jacksonville International and hosts a busy mix of local training, transient GA and executive traffic drawn by the island's resorts. Its three intersecting hard-surfaced runways, each over a mile long, make it an interesting and unusually well-equipped destination for a small municipal field.
Fernandina Beach Municipal Airport sits on Amelia Island, serving the city of Fernandina Beach, the wider Amelia Island resort community and Nassau County as its principal general aviation field. It is owned and operated by the City of Fernandina Beach and is designated a reliever airport for Jacksonville International Airport, meaning it absorbs a good deal of general aviation traffic that would otherwise use the larger commercial field to the southwest. For a simulator pilot the airport is notable for its unusual layout of three separate paved runways, its wartime Navy heritage, and the steady flow of local training flights alongside transient and executive traffic visiting the island.
The airport lies on Amelia Island, about three nautical miles south of Fernandina Beach's historic downtown and under two miles from the island's Atlantic beaches, hotels and resort accommodation. It is roughly 27 miles northeast of Jacksonville International Airport, for which it acts as a general aviation reliever field, and is within range of other Northeast Florida general aviation airports such as Craig-Jacksonville Executive and Herlong. Nearby military helicopter operators, including US Navy units from NAS Jacksonville and Naval Station Mayport and Coast Guard and Florida Army National Guard helicopters from Cecil Field, occasionally use the field for practice.
Fernandina Beach Municipal has three physical runways, all hard-surfaced and lit. Runway 04/22 is 5,292 ft. Runway 13/31 is 5,124/4,332 ft. Runway 09/27 is 4,969/4,839 ft. All three runways exceed a mile in length, giving the field generous infrastructure for a general aviation airport of its size. The field elevation is 13 ft and there is no ILS approach.
No ILS approach is available at Fernandina Beach Municipal; any instrument approaches in use rely on other means of guidance rather than a localiser and glideslope.
The airport can be identified from the air by its distinctive layout of three intersecting runways set among coastal marsh, golf courses and pine woodland on the southern end of Amelia Island. Fernandina Beach's historic downtown and waterfront lie a few miles to the north, while the island's Atlantic beaches and resort hotels are close by to the east, both useful landmarks when inbound to the field. Golf course fairways belonging to the Amelia River and city golf courses, which occupy portions of airport property, are visible immediately adjacent to the runway complex.
The airfield was developed during the Second World War as a United States Navy training base, operating as Outlying Field Fernandina Beach within the Naval Air Station Jacksonville complex; Navy pilots flew the F4U Corsair from the field at that time. Ownership passed from the Navy to the City of Fernandina Beach in 1946, and the city has operated the airport ever since. The surplus military origins left the field with substantial infrastructure for its size, including three long paved runways, which the city has continued to maintain and upgrade over the decades.
Today the airport functions as a general aviation reliever for Jacksonville International, handling a mix of local flying, training, and transient and executive traffic drawn by Amelia Island's resorts. All three runways carry medium intensity runway lighting and have been resurfaced in recent decades. The field's fixed base operator, Bent Wing Flight Services, is based in a newer terminal building constructed to evoke the shape of the F4U Corsair once flown from the airfield, and the site also hosts an aircraft maintenance and avionics business, a skydiving operation, powered paragliding and hang-gliding trike operators, and an aerial advertising company. The airport regularly supports community events, including the annual Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance, and provides land used for city parks, golf courses and a dog park.
