Imperial County Airport (IATA: IPL, ICAO: KIPL, FAA LID: IPL) is a county-owned public-use airport in Imperial County, California, United States. Also known as Boley Field, it is mostly used for general aviation, but has scheduled passenger service from one commercial airline. Service is subsidized by the Essential Air Service program.
The airport is located one nautical mile (2 km) south of the central business district of Imperial, California, partially in the City of Imperial and partially in an unincorporated area of Imperial County. It serves nearby communities, including El Centro.
As per the Federal Aviation Administration, this airport had 7,061 passenger boardings (enplanements) in calendar year 2008, 5,641 in 2009, and 4,752 in 2010. The National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2011-2015 categorized it as a non-primary commercial service airport.
The first scheduled passenger airline flights were operated by Western Airlines with Douglas DC-3s with service beginning during the late 1940s. Western's service was followed by Bonanza Air Lines in the early 1950s also flying DC-3s.
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Facilities and aircraft
Imperial County Airport covers an area of 370 acres (150 ha) at an elevation of 54 feet (16 m) below mean sea level. It has two asphalt paved runways: 14/32 is 5,308 by 100 feet (1,618 x 30 m) and 8/26 is 4,501 by 75 feet (1,372 x 23 m).
For the 12-month period ending December 31, 2011, the airport had 14,589 aircraft operations, an average of 39 per day: 71% general aviation, 10% scheduled commercial, 2% air taxi, and 17% military. At that time there were 47 aircraft based at this airport: 83% single-engine, 8.5% multi-engine, and 8.5% helicopter.
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Airlines and destinations
Passenger
The following airline offers scheduled passenger service:
SeaPort Airlines previously operated Cessna 208 Caravan single turboprop engine aircraft on all scheduled flights from the airport. On January 19, 2016, Seaport Airlines announced the cessation of all service within California, citing their inability to find pilots as the reason.
Cargo
Historical airline service
Western Airlines was serving Imperial County Airport during the late 1940s with Douglas DC-3 flights to Los Angeles via stops in San Diego and Long Beach, and was also flying nonstop to Yuma. Bonanza Air Lines, a "local service" air carrier as defined by the federal Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), began serving the airport during the early 1950s . According to its March 1, 1953 system timetable, Bonanza listed its flights to the airport as service to El Centro, California and was operating Douglas DC-3 prop aircraft with a daily westbound routing of Phoenix-Blythe-Yuma-El Centro-San Diego-Santa Ana-Los Angeles. Bonanza was also operating a daily eastbound DC-3 service at this time with routing of Los Angeles-Santa Ana-San Diego-El Centro-Yuma-Blythe-Phoenix-Prescott-Kingman-Las Vegas. By 1963, Bonanza had retired the DC-3 from its fleet and was operating all flights into the airport with new Fairchild F-27 turboprops. In 1964, the airline was operating nonstop F-27 propjet flights to Los Angeles and San Diego with one stop service to Phoenix via an intermediate stop in Yuma. In 1968, Bonanza merged with Pacific Air Lines and West Coast Airlines to form Air West which continued to serve the airport with the F-27 with nonstops to San Diego and Santa Ana (now John Wayne Airport) as well as direct flights to Los Angeles, Phoenix and Tucson. In late 1970, Air West was serving the airport with Douglas DC-9-10 and McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30 jetliners with four flights a day including two nonstops to Los Angeles (LAX) and two direct flights to Phoenix (PHX) via an intermediate stop in Yuma (YUM). At this same time, one of the DC-9 jet flights to LAX operated continuing, no change of plane service to Fresno, San Francisco, Portland, OR and Seattle via intermediate stops at other Air West destinations.Air West would then be renamed Hughes Airwest which in 1972 had ceased jet service into the airport but was still operating nonstop F-27 propjet flights to Los Angeles and Santa Ana with direct service to Phoenix via a stop in Yuma.
By 1980, Hughes Airwest had transitioned to an all-jet fleet and was no longer serving the airport. Following the cessation of service by Hughes Airwest, a number of commuter and regional airlines operated flights over the years including one air carrier, Imperial Airlines, that had its beginnings at the airport. The following is a list of airlines and aircraft that served Imperial County Airport (IPL) from 1979 through 1999 primarily to Los Angeles (LAX) and Phoenix (PHX) with Imperial Airlines and Air Bahia also flying nonstop to San Diego (SAN), and Scenic Airlines flying nonstop to both Las Vegas (LAS) and Long Beach (LGB) with this information being taken from the various editions of the Official Airline Guide (OAG) over the years:
- Air Bahia - Piper Navajo, Piper Chieftain
- Cochise Airlines - Convair 440, Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner
- Delta Connection operated by SkyWest Airlines - Embraer EMB-120 Brasilia, Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner
- Imperial Airlines - Beech 18, Beechcraft Queen Air, Cessna 402, Cessna 404, Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner
- Scenic Airlines - Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner
- Sun Aire Lines - Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner
- United Express operated by WestAir - Embraer EMB-120 Brasilia, British Aerospace BAe Jetstream 31
By early 2007, only one airline was serving the airport: SkyWest operating as United Express flying Embraer EMB-120 Brasilia turboprops with nonstop service to LAX as part of a Los Angeles-El Centro/Imperial-Yuma route. SkyWest subsequently ceased all service to the airport.
Statistics
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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