Departure
93%
vs 95% ▼ 2
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Palm Beach County Park Airport, widely known as Lantana Airport, is a county-owned general aviation field a few miles south of downtown West Palm Beach, Florida. It offers three lit hard-surface runways and a long wartime and civil aviation history, making it an interesting stop for VFR pilots exploring the South Florida coast.
Palm Beach County Park Airport (KLNA), commonly called Lantana Airport after the nearby town, is a county-owned, public-use general aviation field serving West Palm Beach, Florida. It has no operating control tower and is used heavily by flight training, charter, banner-towing and helicopter operators, giving it a busy, mixed-traffic character that is worth noting before a visit.
The airport lies in West Palm Beach, Florida, about six nautical miles south of the city's central business district, close to the town of Lantana on Lantana Road. It sits only a few miles south of Palm Beach International Airport (PBI), which also has a major east-west runway; the proximity of the two fields has historically caused confusion for arriving traffic, most notably a 1996 incident in which a Carnival Airlines Boeing 727 lined up on approach to Lantana before being alerted by air traffic control that it was headed for the wrong airport. There is no control tower at Lantana, and traffic is coordinated by pilots on the common frequency; Miami provides approach and departure radar service in the surrounding airspace.
Lantana has three intersecting hard-surface runways, each lit. Runway 10/28 is the longest at 3,474 feet, Runway 16/34 measures 3,424 feet, and Runway 04/22 measures 3,251 feet. There is no instrument landing system at the field.
The airport/departure frequency is 127.35 MHz. Miami approach/departure can be worked on 122.4 MHz. The common traffic advisory frequency and UNICOM is 122.7 MHz, used for both self-announced traffic calls and ground services since there is no tower.
With no control tower, pilots use the CTAF/UNICOM frequency of 122.7 MHz to make position calls and coordinate with other traffic in the pattern. The airport is officially designated noise-sensitive, and operators are strongly encouraged to follow voluntary noise abatement procedures. Helicopter pilots in particular are urged to climb to maximum safe altitude before flying over the surrounding residential areas rather than remaining low over the neighbourhoods.
Noise-sensitive residential neighbourhoods lie to the east, west and south of the airfield, and pilots are asked to be mindful of overflight noise in these areas when routing to and from the pattern. The airport's position on Lantana Road, a short distance south of the larger Palm Beach International Airport, is a useful positional reference, though the similarity of the two fields' runway layouts has been a source of past confusion and warrants care when identifying the correct airport visually.
The land for the airport was donated to Palm Beach County by local families on the condition it serve the public, and the county built the field with government assistance in the early 1940s in anticipation of the growing importance of aviation in Florida. Before the United States entered the Second World War, the site was identified as ideal for offshore anti-submarine patrols against Axis U-boats operating along the Florida coast. The first aircraft landed on 20 August 1941, and when the Civil Air Patrol was formed on 1 December 1941, Lantana was chosen to host Coastal Patrol Base 3. The Army Air Forces Antisubmarine Command also based its 17th Antisubmarine Squadron at the airfield, flying patrols over the Florida coast, the Gulf of Mexico and the Florida Straits until the unit moved to Key West in January 1943. After the military left, the Civil Air Patrol unit relocated to Lantana from Morrison Field for the rest of the war. Through the 1950s the field served as Civil Air Patrol Group 5 headquarters and hosted a United States Customs Service search unit, alongside a flight school and civilian traffic that grew to around 115,000 flights a year. The 1960s brought decline as Palm Beach International opened to general aviation and Boca Raton Airport became operational, drawing traffic away from Lantana; a VOR was installed at the field in early 1969. Rising jet traffic in the late 1960s and 1970s prompted a county noise ordinance banning jet aircraft, while federal aid funded ramp and infrastructure improvements; a VASI system was added to runways 10/28 and 16/34 in 1973. The 1980s saw the airport expanded, with the air right-of-way for runway 10 donated by aviation enthusiasts and that for runway 28 obtained through court action. In the 1990s the airport supported air-charter operators and a seasonal glider operation, and was the only field between Stuart and Fort Lauderdale permitted to conduct banner-towing. It also served as a jump-off point for flights to the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands until rising drug-trafficking concerns curtailed such Caribbean flights from the mid-1990s. In January 2017, security restrictions following presidential visits to nearby Mar-a-Lago forced the airport to close on three weekends in February that year, affecting the roughly two dozen aviation businesses based there.
Palm Beach County Park Airport remains an active general aviation field with a mix of fixed-wing and helicopter traffic and no operating control tower. It is supported by a fixed-base operator, Stellar Aviation, and is home to several flight training schools, along with aircraft maintenance and a propeller shop. The airport continues to be designated noise-sensitive, and operators are asked to observe voluntary noise abatement procedures, particularly helicopter pilots overflying the surrounding residential areas.
