Departure
90%
vs 95% ▼ 5
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Southern California Logistics Airport (KVCV) sits in the Mojave Desert at Victorville, California, on the site of the former George Air Force Base. Its enormous 15,051 ft main runway, once the second-longest public-use strip in the United States, makes it a magnet for airliner storage, maintenance and flight testing rather than routine general aviation traffic, but it remains an active towered field of real interest to a visiting VFR pilot.
Southern California Logistics Airport, also known as Victorville Airport, occupies the former George Air Force Base near Victorville in the High Desert of San Bernardino County. It is operated as a logistics and aerospace facility rather than a passenger airport, hosting aircraft maintenance, modification and long-term storage operations alongside occasional military and cargo use. For a simulator pilot it offers the novelty of an exceptionally long runway and a working desert boneyard environment, with airliners and even wide-body types often parked in ranks alongside the taxiways.
The airfield lies in California's Victor Valley near Interstate 15, in the southwestern Mojave Desert, roughly 50 miles north of San Bernardino and about 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles. It is a towered field, with Joshua Approach/Departure providing the wider approach control service. The surrounding area is thinly populated desert terrain, with the Army's Fort Irwin National Training Center within reach to the north, a link that has historically driven much of the airport's traffic.
KVCV has two paired hard-surfaced runways, both lit. Runway 17/35 is 15,051 feet long and is the field's precision instrument runway, equipped with an ILS on runway 17. Runway 03/21 is 9,128 feet long and serves as the secondary runway. Field elevation is 2,854 feet.
Aerodrome traffic frequency (A/D) is 124.55 MHz. Joshua Approach/Departure handles arrivals and departures into the surrounding airspace. The automated weather observing system (AWOS-3) broadcasts on 109.4 MHz. Ground movement is worked on 124.45 MHz, and the tower, callsign Victorville Tower, operates on 118.35 MHz. Runway 17 is equipped with an ILS for instrument approaches.
The airfield is readily identified from the air by its unusually long main runway and by the large numbers of parked and stored airliners, including wide-body aircraft, lined along its taxiways and aprons, a distinctive feature of the desert boneyard for which the field is well known. Interstate 15 runs nearby and can assist in orientation when approaching from the south.
The airfield began life as George Air Force Base, operating from 1941 to 1992 as a United States Air Force flight training facility. Following the base's closure, the federal government supported its conversion into a civil logistics airport to help the Victor Valley recover economically, and the Southern California International Airport, the immediate predecessor of today's facility, opened in October 1994. In July 2000 the airport received foreign trade zone status from the US Department of Commerce, and around the same period a federal grant funded the extension of the main runway from 10,050 feet to 15,050 feet to accommodate international jet transports and allow fully loaded cargo aircraft to depart safely in summer heat. At that length, runway 17/35 briefly ranked as the second-longest public-use runway in the United States, behind only Denver International Airport's 16,000-foot runway. The airport also became a key hub for transporting soldiers to and from the Army's Fort Irwin National Training Center, with a 2002 military spending bill earmarking funds to continue that role, and a dedicated Army aviation unit, Company D of the 158th Aviation Regiment, was based there under contract. During the sharp drop in air travel of the COVID-19 pandemic, the field's boneyard operator took on large numbers of stored airliners, with around 275 aircraft parked there by late March 2020, including 50 Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-700s, and Qantas began moving its entire Airbus A380 fleet into storage there from July 2020. In late 2006 the airport also became home to Air Tanker 910, a modified McDonnell Douglas DC-10 firefighting aircraft operated under contract to CALFIRE.
Southern California Logistics Airport now functions primarily as an aviation and aerospace logistics hub rather than a general aviation strip. It is home to Southern California Aviation, a large aircraft transitional and storage facility, and hosts major maintenance and modification work, including a Boeing aircraft modification facility and GE Aerospace engine testing. The site is widely known for its aircraft boneyard, storing retired or temporarily grounded airliners from operators around the world. An FBO, Million Air, operates at the field. The surrounding area enjoys very high annual rates of clear flying weather, a characteristic the airport highlights in describing its suitability for flight testing and aircraft development work.The site also includes a Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) training facility used for urban warfare training by US military personnel.