Departure
91%
vs 95% ▼ 4
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Town of East Hampton Airport, coded KJPX and long known by its old identifier KHTO, sits on the western edge of the Town of East Hampton on Long Island, New York, in the heart of the Hamptons. Once one of the largest airfields on Long Island when it opened in the 1930s, it has since become notorious for high-end helicopter and business-jet traffic, seasonal congestion, and a bitter legal battle over its conversion from a public to a privately operated field. For the simulator pilot it offers an interesting mix of grass-roots aviation history, celebrity associations, and the operational quirks of a town-run field with a seasonal tower.
Town of East Hampton Airport lies in the Wainscott section of the Town of East Hampton, just west of East Hampton Village, on the eastern end of Long Island, New York. Owned and operated by the Town of East Hampton, it opened in 1937 and for decades served as a general aviation field for private pilots, seasonal visitors, and a succession of small commuter airlines. In recent years it has become better known for the surge of helicopter charter traffic between Manhattan and the Hamptons, and for the town's contentious effort to convert it from a public airport to a privately operated one, a change reflected in its 2022 switch from the identifier KHTO to KJPX.
The airport sits in Class G uncontrolled airspace and operates as a non-towered field for most of the year, though a seasonal control tower is staffed during the summer months. It is located on the western border of the Town of East Hampton, in Wainscott, immediately west of East Hampton Village on the South Fork of Long Island.
The airport has three physical runways. Runway 10/28 is 4,249 feet long with a hard surface and is lit along its full length. Runway 04/22 is a hard-surfaced strip lit at the 22 end, measuring 2,519 feet from the 04 threshold and 2,138 feet from the 22 threshold. Runway 16/34 is a hard-surfaced strip, unlit, measuring 2,166 feet from the 16 threshold and 2,117 feet from the 34 threshold. There is no ILS at the field.
Radio calls are made on 125.225, which serves as both the tower frequency when the seasonal control tower is operating and the common traffic frequency for non-towered operations at other times. There are non-precision instrument approaches available for use in instrument meteorological conditions, though the field has no ILS.
When the seasonal tower is not in operation the airport functions as an uncontrolled field, and pilots are expected to combine radio calls on 125.225 with visual scanning to maintain separation from other traffic in the pattern.
The airport lies just west of East Hampton Village, providing pilots with a readily identifiable landmark for locating the field when approaching from the east.
Construction began in 1936 on an original 209-acre site that quickly grew to 260 acres, making it briefly the second-largest airport on Long Island after the former Roosevelt Field. Suffolk County sold the land to the Town of East Hampton for one dollar at the urging of local supervisor Perry B. Duryea Sr., and the Works Progress Administration contributed 45,000 dollars toward the original 100,000-dollar construction cost after lobbying by the East Hampton Business Men's Club. The airport opened in 1937 with no water, electricity, telephones, or buildings, its first terminal being a World War I barracks towed to the site by mule from Camp Upton. Hampton Air Service soon began scheduled flights to Holmes Airport near LaGuardia. In 1937 the East Hampton Star speculated that Juan Trippe, who had a nearby house and had shown interest in the field, might have considered it as a base for Pan American's trans-Atlantic service. Plans were drawn up in 1943 to expand the airport to 700 acres, and celebrities including Henry Ford II, W. Averell Harriman, Gary Cooper, and Clark Gable were spotted there during this period. In 1945 Charlotte Niles and Margaret Lowell Wallace, both former Women's Airforce Service Pilots, took over operation of the airport, arranging numerous improvements including a concrete hangar. During the 1980s East Hampton Air and Montauk-Caribbean Airways competed for scheduled service to New York City, joined in 1989 by Trump Air, though all three ceased operations by 1990. A 1989 architectural competition sought a new terminal design, but after the town declined to build the winning entry and litigation followed, the current terminal was completed in 1994. Bill and Hillary Clinton held a fundraiser at an airport hangar in August 1999, and Marine One was parked at the field during some of their visits. The rise of on-demand helicopter charter services from the mid-2010s brought a sharp increase in traffic and noise complaints, prompting the Town to let FAA grant assurances expire in 2021 and pursue conversion to a privately operated airport in 2022, a move that has since been contested in court.
The airport occupies around 600 acres on the western border of the Town of East Hampton and includes a terminal building, a seasonal control tower operated only during the summer months, and some 62 private hangars supporting general aviation. It serves a mix of private pilots, charter operators, commercial users and seasonal visitors, with the majority of its roughly 30,000 annual operations occurring between May and September. Following its 2022 conversion to private-airport status, prior permission is required to use the field, and this arrangement has been the subject of ongoing litigation over the Town's authority to restrict access.
