Departure
94%
vs 95% ▼ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Vero Beach Regional Airport (KVRB) is a tower-controlled, Part 139-certified airfield on Florida's Treasure Coast, a mile northwest of the city of Vero Beach in Indian River County. Home to Piper Aircraft's manufacturing plant and two flight academies, it offers a long, well-lit primary runway and a rich history stretching from a 1930s municipal field through wartime naval service to today's mix of general aviation, flight training and scheduled airline flights.
Vero Beach Regional Airport sits on the Treasure Coast of Florida, a mile northwest of downtown Vero Beach in Indian River County. It is publicly owned by the City of Vero Beach and is best known as the home of Piper Aircraft, whose manufacturing and design operations remain based on the field. The airport also hosts substantial flight training activity through Paris Air Inc. Flight Academy and Skyborne Airline Academy, and is a base for Breeze Airways, making it a lively destination for the visiting VFR pilot as well as a working general aviation and light-airline field.
KVRB is a tower-controlled aerodrome operating under an FAA Part 139 certificate, located about one mile northwest of Vero Beach in Indian River County, Florida. Miami Center provides en-route control in the surrounding airspace, with Miami Approach/Departure handling arrivals and departures into the local area.
The airfield has three physical runways, all hard-surfaced and lit. The main runway, 12R/30L, is 7,296 feet long. A second runway, 04/22, measures 4,971 feet, and a shorter parallel runway, 12L/30R, is 3,501 feet long. Field elevation is 20 feet.
Vero Beach Tower operates on 126.3 MHz, which also serves as the CTAF. Ground control is on 127.45 MHz, and clearance delivery is available on 134.975 MHz. ATIS broadcasts on 120.575 MHz, and Miami Approach/Departure works traffic on 123.625 MHz, with Miami Center on 132.25 MHz. St Petersburg Radio provides flight service on 122.2 MHz, and UNICOM is on 122.95 MHz.
The airport traces its origins to 1929, when a group including local businessman Bud Holman built the field at Vero Beach; it was formally dedicated in 1930. Eastern Air Lines began refuelling there in 1932 and started passenger and mail service in 1935, making Vero Beach the smallest airport in Florida at the time to have airmail service, a role it retained until around January 1973. By the end of the 1930s the field had gained runway lighting and radio and teletype equipment, with further runway extensions carried out in 1939 and improvements funded by the Civil Aeronautics Administration in 1940. In 1942 the U.S. Navy selected the airport as the site for a naval air station, commissioning Naval Air Station Vero Beach that year. The base trained naval aviators, initially on SB2A Buccaneers from February 1943, before switching in December 1944 to night fighter training on F6F Hellcats and F7F Tigercats. Witham Field at Stuart operated as a subordinate naval auxiliary air station, with outlying landing fields at Sebastian/Roseland and Fort Pierce, the latter also providing air-sea rescue for downed pilots. Over 237,100 flight hours were logged between 1942 and the base's closure in 1946, with the station at its peak housing 250 aircraft and 1,400 Navy and Marine Corps personnel, including Navy WAVES and Woman Marines. The Navy closed the station in 1947 and returned the field to the city for civil use. In 1948 Bud Holman invited the Brooklyn Dodgers to use the former naval barracks for spring training, leading to the creation of the adjacent 110-acre Dodgertown complex, which the Dodgers organisation continued to use even after becoming the Los Angeles Dodgers, until moving to Arizona in 2008. Piper Aircraft chose Vero Beach for a research and development centre in 1957 and moved its administrative and manufacturing operations there in 1961, expanding to over 2,000 employees by 1967. Manufacturing ceased at the site in the mid-1980s amid rising product liability insurance costs, resuming in 1995 after Congress limited manufacturer liability. The airport has also seen periods of scheduled commercial service, including USAir Express flights to Melbourne and Orlando in the 1990s and American Eagle service to Miami that ended in February 1996.
Vero Beach Regional Airport remains the home of Piper Aircraft and functions as a tower-controlled, Part 139-certified facility covering some 1,707 acres. Flight training is a major part of current operations, with Paris Air Inc. Flight Academy, founded in 1988, offering FAA Part 141 and Part 61 programmes to domestic and international students, and Skyborne Airline Academy, which took over and rebranded the former FlightSafety Academy in 2021, also based on the field. Scheduled commercial service resumed in February 2023 when Breeze Airways began flights to Hartford, later expanding its route network and establishing an operating base at the airport.