Departure
96%
vs 95% ▲ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Northeast Philadelphia Airport (KPNE) is a busy general aviation reliever field on the northeastern edge of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, roughly 15 miles from Philadelphia International Airport. It hosts a mix of single and multi-engine training traffic, corporate jets and a notably active helicopter community, and offers an ILS approach to its main runway.
Northeast Philadelphia Airport, known locally as PNE, is a City of Philadelphia-owned airport serving as the general aviation reliever for Philadelphia International Airport (PHL). It sits about 15 miles northeast of PHL and handles no scheduled commercial flights, instead supporting a large volume of single-engine and light-twin training traffic alongside corporate aircraft and a significant helicopter presence, including police, television and flight-test operations. For the simulator pilot, PNE offers a satisfying mix of a control tower, an ILS approach and two crossing hard-surfaced runways within a dense, built-up part of the city.
The airport lies just north of the intersection of Grant Avenue and Ashton Road in Northeast Philadelphia, bounded roughly by Grant Avenue to the south, Academy Road to the east, Comly Road to the north and the Roosevelt Boulevard (U.S. 1) to the west. It is a medium-sized, primarily general and corporate aviation airport approximately 15 miles northeast of the larger Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), and falls under the wider Philadelphia terminal airspace structure with Philadelphia Approach/Departure providing radar service to arriving and departing traffic.
PNE has two paved runway pairs. Runway 06/24 is 6,993/6,992 feet long, hard-surfaced and lit, with an ILS serving Runway 24. Runway 15/33 is 4,986 feet long, hard-surfaced and lit, with no instrument approach.
Philadelphia Approach/Departure works inbound and outbound traffic on 123.8 MHz. The airport ATIS broadcasts on 121.15 MHz, and clearance delivery is available on 127.25 MHz. The tower, which also serves as the CTAF, operates on 126.9 MHz, with ground control on 121.7 MHz. UNICOM is available on 122.95 MHz. Runway 24 is equipped with an ILS for instrument approaches.
Because residential neighbourhoods and businesses have grown up close to the airport boundary since it was farmland, pilots are required to observe noise abatement procedures when operating in the local area. No commercial airline traffic uses the field, and much of the circuit traffic consists of single-engine and light-twin training aircraft together with a substantial number of helicopters, so pilots should expect a busy and varied traffic pattern.
The airport is readily identified from the air by its position just north of the Grant Avenue and Ashton Road intersection, with the Roosevelt Boulevard (U.S. 1) running along its western boundary and Comly Road marking the northern edge of the site. The surrounding area is a mix of light industrial development, including a Pepsi-Cola bottling plant and an industrial park, set within otherwise dense residential Northeast Philadelphia.
The airport began in the 1930s as the Northeast Airport, a grass field with no paved runways and one of three small airfields in the area, alongside the nearby Boulevard Airport, Budd Field and Somerton Airport, all close enough that pilots had to take care not to infringe on each other's traffic patterns. During the Second World War the United States Army Air Corps began building a 545-acre airbase on the site, but the project was never completed and the property passed to the City of Philadelphia in 1944. The city finished the work and the field opened as Philadelphia Northeast Airport in June 1945, being renamed North Philadelphia Airport in 1948. Runway 6/24 was extended to its present length in 1960, at which point Runway 10/28 was abandoned owing to construction at its western end; the airport took its current name, Northeast Philadelphia Airport, in 1980. From September 1973 the field was headquarters and maintenance base for Ransome Airlines, which flew scheduled Allegheny Commuter services to Washington National and Philadelphia International as a feeder for Allegheny Airlines; Ransome's passenger operations from PNE ended with the 1981 PATCO strike, and the carrier later passed through Pan American and Trans World Airlines ownership before its maintenance base at PNE closed in 1995 with the loss of 300 local jobs. The airport has also seen serious accidents, including the fatal crash of a USAF Douglas C-47 a mile north of the field in October 1952, and the April 1991 mid-air collision near Merion Elementary School between a Piper Aerostar carrying U.S. Senator John Heinz and a Bell 412 helicopter, which killed all aboard both aircraft and two children on the ground.
PNE remains an active general aviation reliever airport with no scheduled commercial service, instead accommodating a large fleet of corporate and privately owned aircraft dominated by single-engine types, along with twins, jets, turboprops and helicopters. Two fixed-base operators on the field provide fuel, major aircraft repair, hangar rental, aircraft rental and charter, flight instruction and aircraft sales, and the airport also offers on-call U.S. Customs, Immigration and Department of Agriculture services for corporate international travel.