Departure
95%
vs 95%
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Galbraith Lake Airport is a remote, state-owned public-use airfield on Alaska's North Slope, sitting beside its namesake glacial lake just west of the Dalton Highway. It serves as a staging point for general aviation and air-taxi traffic supporting the Trans-Alaska Pipeline corridor and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and offers a lit hard-surfaced runway well above the Arctic Circle.
Galbraith Lake Airport is a state-owned, public-use aerodrome serving Galbraith Lake in the North Slope Borough of Alaska. It is a quiet general-aviation field whose traffic is dominated by air-taxi and utility flying rather than scheduled services, and it hosts an office of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. For a simulator pilot it offers a genuinely remote Arctic strip experience, framed by tundra, a glacial lake and the Brooks Range foothills.
The airfield lies in an uninhabited stretch of Alaska's North Slope, with the lake and airport situated west of the Dalton Highway and north of Pump Station 4 of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. Approach and departure service in the area is provided by Anchorage Air Route Traffic Control Center (ZAN) via the Galbraith remote communications air-ground facility on 134.6 (source: SkyVector).
The airfield has a single physical runway, 14/32, 5,318 feet long with a hard surface and runway lighting. There is no ILS approach.
No dedicated communications frequency is published for the airport itself. Approach and departure control in the vicinity is handled by Anchorage ARTCC (ZAN) on 134.6 through the Galbraith remote air-ground communications outlet.
Galbraith Lake itself, some 3.6 miles long and formed by glacial action, is the dominant landmark and lies immediately alongside the runway. The Dalton Highway runs along the east side of the lake, and Pump Station 4 of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System lies to the south, both useful for orientation when inbound.
The lake was named in 1951 after Bart Galbraith, a bush pilot who died in a 1950 crash while flying between Barter Island and Barrow. A construction work camp was established at Galbraith Lake during the building of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in the 1970s, and the surrounding infrastructure enabled archaeological survey work in the area. On 30 August 1974 an Alaska International Air Lockheed L-100 Hercules, registration N100AK, exploded at the airport while unloading gasoline; the flight engineer died of burns almost three weeks later.
The airport remains a general-aviation facility with an office of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on site. In the twelve months to July 2008 it recorded 361 aircraft operations, averaging about 30 per month, split roughly 49 percent air taxi, 44 percent general aviation and 7 percent scheduled commercial. Operational notes for the field include limited snow removal and cold-temperature airport procedures, reflecting its high-latitude Arctic setting (source: SkyVector).