Departure
96%
vs 95% ▲ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Grant County International Airport lies in the semi-arid desert of central Washington, six miles northwest of Moses Lake, and is best known for its enormous 13,500-foot main runway, one of the longest in the United States. A former World War II training field and later Larson Air Force Base, it has since hosted Concorde certification trials, decades of Japan Airlines heavy-jet training, and rows of grounded Boeing 737 MAX airliners, making it a fascinating and unusually spacious destination for the simulator pilot.
Grant County International Airport, at Moses Lake in Grant County, Washington, is owned and operated by the Port of Moses Lake. Once a military base, it now ranks among the largest general aviation airports in the country by land area and runway length, with its main strip long enough to have served as an alternate landing site for the Space Shuttle. For a sim pilot the appeal lies in its sheer scale, its unusual mix of light aircraft, military tankers and stored airliners, and its rich flight-test and training history.
The airport sits about six miles northwest of the central business district of Moses Lake, in Grant County, in the semi-arid desert country east of the Cascade Range. This location gives the field a reputation for consistently good flying weather. The main campus of Big Bend Community College, which runs a flight school and aviation maintenance programme, is also located on the airport grounds, making the field a useful landmark for the surrounding area.
Grant County International Airport has five physical runways, all with hard surfaces. The main runway, 14L/32R, is 13,484 feet long and lit, with an ILS serving runway 32R. Runway 04/22 is a second long parallel strip at roughly 9,985 to 9,986 feet, also lit. Runway 09/27 measures 3,495 feet and is unlit. Runway 18/36 is about 3,317 to 3,320 feet and lit, and a shorter parallel runway, 14R/32L, is 2,928 feet and lit. The field lies at an elevation of 1,168 feet.
Air-ground communications are provided on 126.4 MHz, with approach and departure services also available. The tower and common traffic frequency operate on 118.25 MHz, ground control on 121.9 MHz, and the ATIS broadcasts on 119.05 MHz. Seattle Radio can be reached on 122.4 MHz, and UNICOM is available on 122.95 MHz. An instrument landing system serves runway 32R.
The town of Moses Lake, six miles to the southeast, is the principal visual reference for locating the field, and the Big Bend Community College campus on the airport grounds is a useful landmark once in the vicinity.
The airfield opened during the Second World War as a training field and was subsequently operated by the United States Air Force as Larson Air Force Base until 1966. On 24 June 1969, Japan Airlines Flight 90, a Convair 880, crashed on takeoff from runway 32R after a simulated engine failure led to an uncontrollable sideslip, killing three of the five crew on board. In November 1974 the airport hosted a Concorde for a month during FAA certification testing. For more than forty years, until its training office closed in March 2009, Japan Airlines used the field for heavy-jet crew training, and it has also supported flight testing of the Mitsubishi SpaceJet. Its long runway made it an alternate landing site for the NASA Space Shuttle. In 2011 the 92nd Air Refueling Wing temporarily relocated its KC-135 tanker fleet and operations here from Fairchild Air Force Base during runway works there. From March 2019 the airport became a storage site for grounded Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, with numbers rising to around 130 by October of that year.
Traffic today is predominantly general aviation and military, supplemented by air taxi and cargo operations; scheduled passenger air service ended in June 2010 and has not resumed. Cargo carriers Ameriflight and FedEx Feeder serve the field. Big Bend Community College operates its flight school and aviation maintenance programmes from the airport grounds, and the field continues to be used by the U.S. Air Force and Boeing for testing work.