Tri-Cities Airport (New York)

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Tri-Cities Airport
IATA: CZG - ICAO: KCZG
Summary
Airport type Public
Operator Village of Endicott
Serves Endicott, New York
Elevation AMSL 833 ft (253.9 m)
Coordinates 42°04′42.72″N, 76°05′46.79″W
Runways
Direction Length Surface
ft m
3/21 3,900 1,189 Asphalt

Tri-Cities Airport (IATA: CZG, ICAO: KCZG) is a public airport located three miles (5 km) southwest of the village of Endicott in Broome County, New York, USA.

Contents

[edit] Facilities

Tri-Cities Airport covers 230 acres (93 ha) and has one runway:

  • Runway 3/21: 3,900 x 75 ft. (1,189 x 23 m), Surface: Asphalt

[edit] History

The Tri-Cities Airport was the principal airport for the Endicott-Johnson City-Binghamton area from the 1930s through the early 1950s. In its early years, it had a passenger terminal building, control tower, and cafe. The tower and cafe have since been demolished, but the small terminal building still exists, although it has been abandoned for some years. As the DC-3 era came to an end, larger passenger planes coming into service required longer runways and a new, larger Greater Binghamton Airport was built. Tri-Cities began with unpaved runways of about 3000 feet in length. Later two runways were paved. Runway 3-21 was 3500 feet long and 100 feet wide, but later was lengthened after 1977 to 3900 feet and the width was reduced to 75 feet. Also, the runway previously was accessed by taxiing aircraft on the grass to the west northwest side of the runway, but a parallel asphalt taxiway was added along with a few connector taxiways.

The east-west crosswind runway 9-27 was about 3200 feet long and 100 feet wide, but was abandoned around 1969 and now is used as a taxiway along a portion of its length and aircraft parking can be conducted there.

A section of grass on the opposite side (east) from the parallel taxiway is used by gliders for landings and for tow operations for takeoff.

An Automated Weather Observing System (AWOS-3) was installed to provide current weather information to pilots.

[edit] Airport lighting

Runway 3-21 is equipped with medium intensity runway edge lighting. Both runway ends have runway end identifier lights. Runway 21 is equipped with precision approach path indicators, having replaced the older VASIs.

The airport also has an airport beacon, but hills - especially the one to the north - can limit its ability to be viewed.

[edit] Instrument procedures

For many years a circling instrument approach has brought aircraft in from the north via the Binghamton VORTAC (about five miles distant), but landing minimums were rather high as the aircraft were 1227 feet above the airport elevation (although DME-equipped aircraft can descend up to an additional 80 feet) and visibility required for the approach was about 1 1/4 miles for aircraft flying at 90 knots or slower, but range up to 3 miles for aircraft flying at more than 120 knots. Some historical procedures in the 1970s requiring around 1 3/4 miles visibility as an absolute minimum.

With the addition of GPS-based navigation, a straight-in instrument approach was approved for runway 21 and this has allowed operations with lower minimum descent altitude requirement of 887 feet and visibility of 1 1/4 miles for those aircraft flying at 120 knots or slower, but 2 3/4 mile visibility is needed for faster aircraft.

[edit] Weather factors

Being adjacent to the Susquehanna River, the airport experiences fog on a relatively frequent basis during the late night to mid morning hours during the late summer to autumn with visibilities often under one quarter mile.

[edit] Notable Personalities

  • "Huck" and Carol LittleJohn airport historians and their dog "Cinder" and Mike "Dick" Carey

[edit] External links

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