Departure
92%
vs 95% ▼ 3
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Santa Rosa Route 66 Airport is a small municipal airfield on the high plains of eastern New Mexico, three nautical miles east of the town of Santa Rosa. Owned by the Town of Santa Rosa, it is notable for one runway that began life as a stretch of the original U.S. Route 66 before the Interstate 40 bypass was built, giving the field its name and a distinctive slice of American road history.
Santa Rosa Route 66 Airport (ICAO KSXU, FAA identifier SXU) is a public-use general aviation airfield serving the town of Santa Rosa in Guadalupe County, New Mexico. It is owned by the Town of Santa Rosa and is of particular interest to visiting pilots for its unusual origin: one of its two runways was once a paved section of the historic U.S. Route 66 highway. The field sees light but steady general aviation traffic and offers a quiet, straightforward stop for pilots tracing the old Route 66 corridor through the American Southwest.
The airport lies about three nautical miles east of the central business district of Santa Rosa, New Mexico, in Guadalupe County. It sits on the open high plains of eastern New Mexico near the Interstate 40 corridor, which itself replaced the original U.S. Route 66 alignment in this area.
The airfield has two paved hard-surface runways. Runway 01/19 is 5,014 feet long, and runway 08/26 is 4,291 feet long. Neither runway is equipped with an instrument landing system.
No instrument approaches are published for the field, and it does not have an ILS. It is not associated with any navaid or published radio frequency in the sources reviewed.
The airport's original runway, 08/26, was built along a section of the old U.S. Highway 66 alignment before the construction of Interstate 40 rerouted the highway away from the town. A second runway, 01/19, was added in the mid-1990s to complement the historic strip. The airfield was previously identified under the code I58 before adopting its current FAA designation, SXU.
The airport is owned and operated by the Town of Santa Rosa and covers an area of about 401 acres. For the twelve-month period ending April 2021, it recorded around 2,130 to 4,150 aircraft operations, averaging roughly 80 movements per week, the great majority of which were general aviation flights, with a small proportion of air taxi and military activity.