Departure
94%
vs 95% ▼ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Lafayette Regional Airport (KLFT) lies two miles southeast of Lafayette, Louisiana, serving as the principal commercial and general aviation gateway for south-central Louisiana. It hosts scheduled regional jet service alongside a major helicopter operation supporting Gulf of Mexico oil and gas activity, making it a distinctive stop for simulator pilots interested in mixed airline and rotary-wing traffic. The field offers a long ILS-equipped main runway plus a crosswind strip, all within controlled Class C airspace.
Lafayette Regional Airport sits two miles southeast of the city of Lafayette in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, and is owned and operated by the City Parish of Lafayette. It combines scheduled regional airline service with a substantial general aviation and helicopter presence, most notably as home to Petroleum Helicopters International (PHI), one of the largest helicopter operators in the world, supporting offshore oil and gas activity in the Gulf of Mexico. For a simulator pilot the field offers an interesting mix of airline traffic, corporate and GA movements, and heavy helicopter operations, all against the backdrop of Louisiana's bayou country.
Lafayette Regional lies within Class C controlled airspace and sits close to U.S. Highway 90 on the eastern side of the city of Lafayette, in Lafayette Parish. The airport serves the wider Lafayette metropolitan area as well as New Iberia and other communities across south-central Louisiana.
The airport has three physical runways. The main runway, 04R/22L, is 8,004 feet long with a hard surface, lit, and equipped with an ILS. The crosswind runway, 11/29, is 5,392 feet long, hard-surfaced and lit. A shorter parallel runway, 04L/22R, is 4,101 feet long, hard-surfaced and lit, but does not have an ILS. Field elevation is 36 feet.
Lafayette Regional operates with full air traffic control under Class C airspace. The tower and CTAF frequency is 118.5 MHz, with ground control on 121.8 MHz. Approach and departure services are provided on 121.1 MHz, and ATIS broadcasts on 134.05 MHz. Clearance delivery is also available, along with a radio (flight service-type) frequency on 122.35 MHz and unicom on 122.95 MHz. A separate frequency, 125.55 MHz, is listed for CLD. The main runway, 04R/22L, is equipped with an ILS for instrument approaches.
As Lafayette Regional lies within Class C airspace, arriving aircraft should expect to establish two-way radio contact with approach control before entering the airspace and to follow tower instructions for sequencing and joining. Specific circuit heights and local noise-abatement procedures are not detailed in available sources.
Lafayette Regional traces its airline history back to the late 1940s, when Eastern Airlines began the first scheduled service to the field, flying to Houston and New Orleans with intermediate stops, before ending its service in 1966. Trans-Texas Airways followed in the late 1950s, later becoming Texas International Airlines and eventually merging into Continental Airlines, which served Lafayette with nonstop flights to Houston until its own merger into United Airlines in 2012. American Eagle began nonstop service to Dallas/Fort Worth in 1984, following on from MetroFlight's launch of the route a year earlier, and later added Charlotte in 2021. Delta Connection began serving Dallas/Fort Worth in 1987 and later Atlanta, with Delta briefly operating mainline Boeing 717 jet service on the Atlanta route in 2014. Northwest Airlink connected Lafayette to Memphis from 1991 until Northwest's merger into Delta in 2010. United Airlines briefly operated a nonstop service to Denver in 2014-2015, and Frontier Airlines flew Airbus A320s to Denver and Orlando between 2018 and 2019 before suspending service. The airport's runway layout has also evolved: a third runway, 04L/22R, parallel to the main 04R/22L strip, was disabled for a period after a new cargo ramp was built across its approach path, and 11/29 was closed for lengthy repaving and reconstruction work during construction of the new terminal, being used temporarily as a taxiway before regaining FAA clearance to resume operations in mid-2024.
Lafayette Regional today combines scheduled airline operations with a broad range of general aviation services, including fueling, aircraft servicing, a flight school, and cargo handling, alongside meeting and lounge facilities for corporate operators. The airport is home to Petroleum Helicopters International, supporting extensive helicopter traffic linked to Gulf of Mexico oil and gas operations. A new passenger terminal opened in January 2022, replacing the former terminal building. In the year ending February 2022 the airport recorded an average of 124 aircraft operations per day, with a substantial share of general aviation and air taxi movements alongside scheduled commercial and a small proportion of military traffic.
