Departure
92%
vs 95% ▼ 4
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Southwest Washington Regional Airport (KKLS), also known as Molt Taylor Field, is a city-owned public-use airfield two nautical miles southeast of Kelso, Washington, serving the Longview-Kelso metropolitan area. It offers a single paved runway, an uncontrolled traffic pattern with UNICOM advisories, and a long history stretching back to its wartime origins as a training field for amateur pilots.
Southwest Washington Regional Airport, formerly known as Kelso-Longview Regional Airport or Molt Taylor Field, is a city-owned public-use airfield in Cowlitz County, Washington, roughly two nautical miles southeast of downtown Kelso. It functions as a regional general aviation gateway for southwest Washington, hosting training, business and emergency-support flying, and is of interest to visiting VFR pilots as a straightforward, uncontrolled field with a single hard-surfaced runway.
The airport lies in the Longview-Kelso metropolitan area of Cowlitz County, Washington, close to the confluence of the Cowlitz and Coweeman rivers and just northeast of the Columbia River. Approach and departure control services in the area are provided by Seattle Center. There is no air traffic control tower on the field, so arriving traffic self-announces on the local frequency.
The airfield has a single physical runway, 12/30, of 4,381 feet, hard-surfaced and lit in both directions.
Traffic at Southwest Washington Regional Airport should monitor and call on the CTAF/UNICOM frequency of 122.8 MHz. An automated weather observation is broadcast on AWOS-3 at 135.075 MHz. Seattle Center provides overlying radar service on 124.2 MHz, and Seattle Radio (Flight Service) can be reached on 122.25 MHz. There is no instrument landing system at the field.
As an uncontrolled airfield, pilots are expected to make their own traffic announcements on the CTAF and integrate with any other aircraft in the pattern using runway 12 or 30 as conditions dictate. No specific noise abatement procedures or circuit height restrictions are given in the available sources.
The airport sits southeast of Kelso's central business district, between the Cowlitz and Coweeman rivers and near the Columbia River, which together offer useful visual references for pilots inbound from the surrounding valley terrain.
The airfield opened in May 1941 on 109 acres of a former dairy farm as a training field for amateur pilots, and has since grown into a regional transportation asset for southwest Washington. The original landing strip was paved in 1950, with the first administration and terminal buildings following in the 1960s and further improvements in the 1980s to cope with rising traffic; the runway was segmented for separate takeoff and landing operations in 1980. The airport was long known as Kelso-Longview Regional Airport, or Molt Taylor Field, in honour of flying car designer Moulton Taylor, before being renamed Southwest Washington Regional Airport in 2009. During the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens the airport served as a key base for search and rescue operations and was visited by the President of the United States.
The airport continues to support general aviation, business aircraft, a flight school, and emergency and firefighting operations, including helicopter operations for the Department of Natural Resources and periodic military use. It has also hosted life-flight helicopter operations and served as a base camp for wildland firefighters during regional fire seasons.
