Departure
92%
vs 95% ▼ 3
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Gallup Municipal Airport is a city-owned general aviation and small commuter airport three miles southwest of Gallup, New Mexico, sitting at a high elevation of 6,467 feet amid the mesas of McKinley County. It offers a single long asphalt runway with an ILS approach, making it a useful stop for sim pilots exploring the high desert country along old Route 66.
Gallup Municipal Airport (KGUP) serves the city of Gallup and surrounding McKinley County in northwestern New Mexico. It is owned and operated by the City of Gallup as a general aviation facility, though it also hosts limited scheduled commuter service. For a simulator pilot, the airport's appeal lies in its high-altitude single-runway operation, its ILS approach, and its setting on the historic Route 66 corridor through the red-rock high desert of the Colorado Plateau.
The airport lies about three miles southwest of downtown Gallup, New Mexico, close to Historic Highway 66. No specific airspace classification or controlling terminal facility is detailed in available sources, but the field is served remotely by Albuquerque radio for flight service communications rather than a local control tower.
Gallup Municipal has one physical runway, 06/24, a hard-surfaced strip 7,301 feet long that is lit for night operations. Runway 06 is equipped with an ILS approach, giving instrument pilots a precision option into the field; runway 24 has no published instrument approach lighting system noted.
Weather is available via ASOS on 118.375 MHz. Albuquerque Radio can be reached on 122.6 MHz for flight service functions such as opening or closing flight plans. The common traffic advisory frequency and UNICOM is 122.95 MHz, used for self-announced traffic calls in the absence of a control tower.
No control tower is present, so arriving and departing traffic should make position calls on the 122.95 MHz CTAF/UNICOM frequency. No specific published circuit height, pattern direction, or noise abatement procedure is detailed in available sources.
The airport sits directly on the line of Historic Route 66, three miles southwest of Gallup's city center, which serves as a useful ground reference for pilots inbound from the northeast. The surrounding terrain is high desert mesa country typical of the region.
The airfield is believed to have opened in the late 1940s under the name Senator Clarke Field, before being renamed Gallup Municipal Airport in the early 1980s. Airline service began with Monarch Airlines flying Douglas DC-3s to Albuquerque and Salt Lake City; Monarch merged into Frontier Airlines in 1950, which later served Denver and Phoenix with Convair 340 and 580 aircraft until 1981. A succession of commuter carriers followed, including Cochise Airlines, Desert Airlines, Sun West Airlines, and Mesa Airlines, with Mesa's Beechcraft 99s giving way to America West Express Beechcraft 1900Ds serving Phoenix through the 1990s; a brief upgrade to 30-seat Embraer Brasilia aircraft occurred in 1994. Scheduled service to Phoenix ended in 1999, and all commuter service ceased in November 2002 when the airport lost Essential Air Service subsidy eligibility. Great Lakes Airlines briefly restored Phoenix and Denver-via-Farmington flights in 2007-2008 before Gallup went without scheduled airline service for fourteen years.
Gallup Municipal Airport remains a city-owned general aviation facility with a fixed-base operator providing services on the field. Scheduled passenger service resumed in August 2022 when Advanced Air began a daily flight to Phoenix-Sky Harbor using Beechcraft King Air 350 turboprops configured for eight passengers, with a Las Vegas route added in November 2024 operating twice weekly. Cargo service is provided by a FedEx Feeder route to Albuquerque. Pilots planning a visit should check for any prior permission requirements before arrival.
