Departure
98%
vs 95% ▲ 3
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Fort Wayne International Airport (KFWA) lies eight miles southwest of Fort Wayne, Indiana, on the site of the former Baer Field, a major World War II training base. Today it is a Class C, twin-runway-pair commercial and cargo airport with full ATC services and an ILS, making it a useful and instructive stop for the simulator pilot flying in the American Midwest.
Fort Wayne International Airport, known by the ICAO code KFWA, serves Fort Wayne in Allen County, Indiana, and is owned and operated by the Fort Wayne-Allen County Airport Authority. It combines scheduled airline service with a substantial air cargo operation and retains strong links to its origins as the wartime Baer Army Air Base, making it an airfield of real historical depth as well as a busy modern Class C field for the visiting simulator pilot.
KFWA sits within controlled Class C airspace and is a designated port of entry with customs and landing rights facilities. The airport lies eight miles southwest of the city of Fort Wayne in Allen County, Indiana, at an elevation of 797 feet.
Fort Wayne International has three physical runway pairs. Runway 05/23 is the longest, at 11,962/11,961 feet, hard-surfaced and lit, with an ILS serving runway 05. Runway 14/32 is 7,979 feet, hard-surfaced and lit, with an ILS serving runway 32. Runway 09/27 is the shortest, at 3,980 feet, hard-surfaced but unlit.
Arriving and departing traffic uses approach and departure control on 127.2 MHz for aircraft southwest or northwest of the active runway, and 132.15 MHz for those southeast or northeast of it. The tower operates on 119.1 MHz, with ground control on 121.9 MHz and clearance delivery on 124.75 MHz. ATIS is broadcast on 121.25 MHz, and UNICOM is available on 122.95 MHz. Fort Wayne Radio, a flight service frequency, is on 122.2 MHz, and a command post operations frequency is listed on 138.4 MHz. The field has an ILS, serving runway 05 on the main runway pair and runway 32 on the secondary pair.
The airfield was built for around $10 million as a United States Army Air Corps base shortly before the Second World War, after local business interests assembled the necessary land and presented it to the War Department in time to meet a competitive deadline under the Development of Landing Areas for National Defense initiative. War Department policy required new bases to be named after deceased military aviators, so the field was named Baer Field in honour of Paul Frank Baer, a Fort Wayne native, World War I flying ace, and early Aeronautics Branch official who had died in a seaplane accident while flying mail and passengers in Shanghai. Operations began in April 1941 under the name Baer Army Air Base, with the weather station activated that August and the base formally activated as Baer Field in November, following the arrival of various service, ordnance and communications units. The 307th Pursuit Squadron trained at the field from January 1942 on Bell P-39 Airacobra and Curtiss P-40 Warhawk aircraft before deploying to England. During the war more than 100,000 military personnel passed through the base, which grew to over one hundred structures and supported numerous ground and air squadrons preparing for the European and Asiatic-Pacific theatres. The base was placed on temporary inactive status in December 1945 and reverted to Baer Army Air Base in 1946, shrinking by January 1947 to a small detachment concerned mainly with records storage. Civil airline service began with TWA operating from what is now Smith Field before Baer Field itself saw scheduled flights, which ended there in 1963; jet service began in January 1967 with United Caravelles, followed by Delta DC-9s and, from 1974, American Airlines Boeing 727s to the newly opened Dallas/Fort Worth. Management passed from the City of Fort Wayne to the newly formed Fort Wayne-Allen County Airport Authority in 1985, and the field was renamed Fort Wayne International Airport in 1991, with the terminal renamed to continue honouring Paul Baer. A major expansion and revitalisation followed through the 1990s, including terminal enlargement between 1994 and 1997, runway upgrades, and development of the Air Trade Center, alongside the airport's first general-public advertising campaign in 1998.
Fort Wayne International remains a nonhub commercial service airport under the Fort Wayne-Allen County Airport Authority, offering scheduled passenger flights to airline hubs including Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Dallas/Fort Worth, Detroit and Minneapolis-Saint Paul, along with services to Orlando, Tampa, Phoenix and seasonal destinations. The airport also supports a substantial air cargo operation from a 600,000-square-foot cargo centre on the southwest side of the field, formerly the Kitty Hawk Aircargo hub and now used by several logistics and aviation companies including FedEx Express. The field is a designated port of entry with customs and landing rights, and operates within Class C airspace with full air traffic control services.
