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Dare County Regional Airport (KMQI) is a general aviation field on Roanoke Island near Manteo, North Carolina, owned by Dare County and run by its Airport Authority. It traces its lineage to a wartime naval air station and today serves light aircraft, cargo feeder flights and visitors to the Outer Banks, with a small aviation museum on site.
Dare County Regional Airport sits on Roanoke Island just outside Manteo, North Carolina, and is owned by Dare County and operated by a nine-member Airport Authority. It is a general aviation field that grew out of a Second World War naval air station, and it retains a strong sense of that history through an on-site museum. For a sim pilot it offers a compact, uncontrolled Outer Banks destination with two crossing hard-surfaced runways, cargo feeder traffic, and easy visual access to Roanoke Island's landmarks.
The airport lies about one mile northwest of the central business district of Manteo, in Dare County, North Carolina, on Roanoke Island. It is adjacent to the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island. There is no control tower at the field itself; traffic in the wider area is worked by Norfolk Approach/Departure, reachable on 124.725 MHz, for arrivals and departures needing a service beyond the airport's own uncontrolled circuit.
Dare County Regional Airport has two paired hard-surfaced, lighted runways. Runway 05/23 is the longer, with 05 measuring 3,999 ft and 23 measuring 4,005 ft. Runway 17/35 is shorter, with 17 measuring 3,010 ft and 35 measuring 2,309 ft. There is no ILS at the field.
The airport uses 122.8 MHz as its CTAF/UNICOM frequency for self-announced traffic advisories in the absence of a tower. Weather information is available on AWOS-3 at 128.275 MHz. Norfolk Approach/Departure can be contacted on 124.725 MHz for those requiring a service in the surrounding controlled airspace. Runway lighting at the field is radio-controlled, allowing pilots to activate it themselves.
Dare County Regional Airport is uncontrolled, so arriving and departing pilots should self-announce on the CTAF/UNICOM frequency of 122.8 MHz and integrate with any other traffic using standard practices for a non-towered field. The runway lighting is radio-controlled and can be switched on by pilots as needed for night or low-visibility operations.
The airport is readily identified by its position immediately adjacent to the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island, and it lies about one mile northwest of downtown Manteo. Nearby landmarks useful for orientation include the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site and the Roanoke Island Festival Park, both on Roanoke Island within a short distance of the field.
Dare County has had an airport presence since the early 1940s, when a small private airfield operated at Skyco on Roanoke Island. On March 1, 1940, the Dare County Board of Commissioners appointed a committee to acquire land and plan a publicly owned airport. Construction of that public airport was under way at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, which led the U.S. Navy to abandon plans for a Naval Auxiliary Air Station at Cape Hatteras and instead develop this Roanoke Island site, which had a similar runway layout. The resulting Naval Auxiliary Air Station Manteo (NAAS Manteo) was commissioned on March 3, 1943, and was shared by the Civil Air Patrol and the U.S. Navy. As a naval air installation it hosted specialised squadron training in F4F Wildcats, F6F Hellcats, SB2C Helldivers, TBM and TBF Avengers, PBY Catalinas and F4U Corsairs, and the Navy and U.S. Coast Guard flew anti-submarine patrols from the field. NAAS Manteo was placed in caretaker status on December 15, 1945, and disestablished in 1947, when control of the airfield reverted to Dare County. The airport was subsequently run by a fixed-base operator before the Dare County Airport Authority took over operations in 1983 and continues to oversee the field today. In 1999 the airport briefly saw scheduled commercial service when Cape Air operated Cessna 402 commuter flights to Norfolk, Virginia.
The airport remains in active general aviation use and hosts a small museum chronicling the history of aviation on the Outer Banks, including exhibits on local aviator Dave Driskill and the airfield's own past. It has a modern terminal building and hangars, and cargo operations continue at the field, with FedEx Feeder flights operated by Mountain Air Cargo to Norfolk, and UPS Airlines cargo services linking Dare County to Edenton, Norfolk and Raleigh/Durham. The airport is owned by Dare County and operated by the Dare County Airport Authority.
