Departure
91%
vs 95% ▼ 4
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Plattsburgh International Airport occupies the site of the former Plattsburgh Air Force Base on the shore of Lake Champlain in upstate New York, close to the Canadian border. It offers a single, immense hard-surfaced runway with an ILS, making it an interesting and unusually generous destination for the simulator pilot used to smaller fields. Once a Strategic Air Command base, it has been redeveloped as a civilian county airport serving Plattsburgh, the wider North Country and, informally, the Montreal region.
Plattsburgh International Airport sits on the site of the decommissioned Plattsburgh Air Force Base, three nautical miles south of the city of Plattsburgh in Clinton County, New York. Owned and operated by Clinton County, it is a public-use, primary commercial-service airport with a single vast runway inherited from its military past, and it draws a large share of its passenger traffic from across the nearby Canadian border. For a simulator pilot, its scale, ILS-equipped runway and former Cold War role make it a distinctive stop in the Lake Champlain area.
The field lies in the Town of Plattsburgh, Clinton County, New York, close to Lake Champlain and roughly 60 miles south of Montreal, Quebec. Approach and departure control for the airport is provided by Burlington Approach/Departure. There is no separate air traffic control tower frequency listed; traffic information is handled on the common CTAF/UNICOM frequency.
Plattsburgh has a single physical runway, 17/35, orientated broadly north-south. It is a hard-surfaced runway 11,744 feet in length, lit for night operations, with an instrument landing system serving runway 35. Its sheer length, a legacy of the airfield's Air Force heritage, is well beyond what is needed for the light aircraft and airline turboprops and jets that use the field today.
Pilots should expect to work Burlington Approach/Departure on 121.1 MHz when transiting the surrounding airspace. On the ground and in the local pattern, the common traffic advisory frequency and UNICOM is 122.7 MHz. Runway 35 is equipped with an ILS for instrument approaches.
No published circuit heights or specific joining instructions are available beyond the use of the CTAF/UNICOM frequency of 122.7 MHz for self-announcing and coordinating with other traffic; pilots should monitor this frequency when operating in the vicinity of the field.
The airport lies close to Lake Champlain and can be identified from the air by its exceptionally long runway and extensive concrete ramp, remnants of its Air Force base origins. The city of Plattsburgh lies a short distance to the north, and the airfield sits just off Interstate 87 at Exit 36, which serves as a useful ground reference when orientating for arrival.
The airfield began life as Plattsburgh Air Force Base, which closed on 25 September 1995 under the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Act of 1990. Following closure, the Plattsburgh Airbase Redevelopment Corporation was formed to manage the roughly 5,000-acre property, dividing it into 165 parcels for redevelopment. Discussions about converting the site into a civilian commercial airport date back to at least 2000, and Clinton County voted in favour of the move on 13 July 2000, with a public hearing held in December 2001. Federal funding followed through the 2000s for a passenger terminal, runway construction and an access road, and the county ended its operating contract with the redevelopment corporation in March 2005. An official groundbreaking took place on 17 August 2005, and the airport officially opened on 26 April 2006. Passenger service began on 18 June 2007, at which point the older Clinton County Airport was closed and all airline operations transferred to the new field. Scheduled service to Washington, DC has been supported under the federal Essential Air Service programme. The airport was closed to traffic between 13 April and approximately 22 June 2021 while the runway's middle section was repaved.
Plattsburgh International Airport has been owned by Clinton County since 2002 and is certificated under Federal Aviation Regulation Part 139. It is described by its operator as a fully operating industrial airport handling both large and small aircraft daily for its tenants, alongside scheduled passenger flights. A passenger terminal was completed in 2017, expanding the airport's role in commercial aviation. The airport advertises that it has no night curfews or flight restrictions and benefits from calm weather for around 97 percent of the year. Its extensive concrete ramp, originally built for military use, continues to support cargo and general aviation operations.