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Tonopah Airport is a county-owned public-use aerodrome in the high desert of central Nevada, sited some seven nautical miles east of the town of Tonopah on the site of the former Tonopah Army Airfield. Uncontrolled and lightly used today, it offers VFR pilots two paved runways at a field elevation of 5,413 feet, with a rich wartime history as a fighter-training base for the USAAF.
Tonopah Airport (KTPH) is a county-owned, public-use airfield serving Tonopah, Nevada, and lying within Nye County in the high desert of the state's central basin. It occupies the site of the wartime Tonopah Army Airfield and today handles a modest mix of general aviation, air taxi and occasional military traffic. For a simulator pilot the appeal lies in its high-desert setting, generous runway lengths inherited from its military past, and its place in the training history of one of the most famous USAAF fighter groups of the Second World War.
The airport lies in Nye County, Nevada, roughly seven nautical miles east of the central business district of Tonopah. It is served en route by Salt Lake Center on 133.45 MHz, indicating that Tonopah sits beneath or near Salt Lake Center's airspace, with Reno Radio available on 122.6 MHz for flight service. There is no tower at the field; traffic is coordinated by pilots themselves on the common frequency.
Tonopah has two physical runways. Runway 15/33 is 7,126 feet long with a hard surface and is lit, making it the primary runway for most traffic. Runway 11/29 is also hard-surfaced but unlit, with the database recording a length of 6,158 feet on the 29 threshold and 5,621 feet on the 11 threshold. Field elevation is 5,413 feet above mean sea level.
An ASOS automated weather observation is available on 118.875 MHz. The airport uses a common CTAF/UNICOM frequency of 123.0 MHz for advisory calls in the traffic pattern. Salt Lake Center can be worked on 133.45 MHz, and Reno Radio (flight service) is available on 122.6 MHz. The airport has no instrument landing system, so arrivals and departures should be planned as visual operations or using other available instrument procedures published for the field.
Tonopah is uncontrolled, so pilots are expected to make position calls on the CTAF/UNICOM frequency of 123.0 MHz and to integrate with any other traffic using standard practices for a non-towered field. No specific circuit heights, noise abatement procedures or local joining restrictions are given in the available material, so pilots should follow standard uncontrolled-airfield procedure and remain alert for military and air taxi movements, which together make up a significant share of operations here.
Tonopah Airport incorporates the former Tonopah Army Airfield, a World War II installation built in the early 1940s and operational by 1942. It served as a training base for numerous USAAF units, most notably the 357th Fighter Group, whose pilots included Chuck Yeager and Bud Anderson. After training at Tonopah, the 357th went on to fly P-51 Mustang fighters against the Luftwaffe from their base at Leiston on the south-eastern coast of England, giving this remote Nevada desert strip a direct link to the air war over Europe.
The airport is owned by Nye County and remains in public use, covering some 3,820 acres. In the twelve months to May 2022 it recorded 7,002 aircraft operations, averaging 134 per week, with the traffic split roughly 68 percent general aviation, 26 percent air taxi and 6 percent military. At that time seven aircraft were based at the field: five single-engine types, one multi-engine aircraft and one helicopter.
