Departure
93%
vs 95% ▼ 3
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Palmerston North Airport lies in the suburb of Milson, a few kilometres northeast of the city centre, and is the main gateway to New Zealand's Manawatū-Whanganui region. It combines a busy sealed runway handling regional airline and freight traffic with a parallel grass strip used for flight training, making it a field of interest to both airline-style and general aviation sim pilots.
Palmerston North Airport, originally established as Milson Aerodrome, serves Palmerston North and the wider Central North Island. It sits in the suburb of Milson on the northeastern edge of the city and is owned by Palmerston North City Council. The field mixes scheduled domestic airline services and overnight freight operations with a significant general aviation and training presence, notably Massey University's School of Aviation, giving it a varied traffic mix that makes it an engaging destination for VFR and IFR flying alike.
The airport sits within the Ohakea Terminal Manoeuvring Area; Ohakea Approach provides a TMA service to both Ohakea and Palmerston North and also issues IFR clearances to nearby Feilding and Whanganui. The field is located in the suburb of Milson, roughly 5.5 kilometres northeast of the Palmerston North central business district.
Palmerston North has two physical runways. The main runway, 07/25, is a hard-surfaced, lit strip of 5789 feet on runway 07 and 5981 feet on runway 25. Alongside it runs a parallel grass runway, 07R/25L, 1879 feet long and lit, which is used for general aviation and training movements.
Air traffic services are provided on Tower 120.6 MHz, which also serves as the CTAF, with Ground on 121.7 MHz. An ATIS broadcast is available on 129.7 MHz, and Ohakea Approach can be contacted on 125.1 MHz for arrivals, departures and IFR clearances. The airport has no ILS.
The site began life in 1931 as a grass airfield established by the Milson Aerodrome Society for private flying. Commercial services started in 1936 with Union Airways, and the airfield also saw military use during the Second World War. The runway was sealed and a terminal built when National Airways Corporation began services in the 1950s, and jet operations followed in 1975 with Air New Zealand Boeing 737-200s. A new terminal opened in 1992 and a new taxiway followed in 1994. Freedom Air launched international services to Australia and Fiji from 1996, though these ended after the airline ceased operations in 2008. On 9 June 1995, Ansett New Zealand Flight 703, a Dash 8 flying a VOR approach to runway 25, crashed in the Tararua Ranges 16 kilometres east of the airport after a landing gear problem led to a descent below profile, killing four of the 21 on board. In 1998 a crowd of ten people towed a fully fuelled Freedom Air Boeing 737-300 more than 100 metres in 47 seconds to mark the opening of runway extensions, a feat logged as a Guinness World Record.
The airport today handles around thirty commercial flights a day to and from Auckland, Blenheim, Christchurch and Nelson, alongside nightly freight services operated by Parcelair and other cargo carriers, and operates around the clock with no curfew. Massey University's School of Aviation runs training operations from the field using Diamond DA40 and DA42 aircraft, making regular use of the parallel grass runway. A terminal redevelopment project began in 2024 to provide a new passenger facility able to handle security screening and larger narrow-body aircraft such as the A320 and 737.