Van Nuys Airport

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Van Nuys Airport

IATA: VNY – ICAO: KVNY – FAA: VNY
Summary
Airport type		Public
Operator		Los Angeles World Airports
Serves		Van Nuys, California
Elevation AMSL		802 ft / 244.4 m
Coordinates		34°12′35″N 118°29′24″W / 34.20972, -118.49
Runways
Direction	Length		Surface
Direction	ft	m	Surface
16R/34L	8,001	2,439	Asphalt
16L/34R	4,011	1,223	Asphalt

Van Nuys Airport (IATA: VNY, ICAO: KVNY, FAA LID: VNY) is a public airport located in Van Nuys in the San Fernando Valley section of the city limits of Los Angeles, California, United States. No commercial airlines fly into this airport; it is used by private, chartered, and small commercial aircraft. It is owned and operated by Los Angeles World Airports.

Van Nuys Airport is currently the world's third busiest general aviation airport and the 25th busiest airport (in terms of takeoffs and landings) in the world. With just two parallel runways, Van Nuys Airport handled 448,681 aircraft movements in 2005, averaging over 1,200 operations/day; in 2006 it handled 394,915 movements, nearly 1,100 per day. By comparison, Los Angeles International Airport (with 4 runways and exceptional amounts of commercial traffic) has roughly 1700 operations a day. The airport was the world's busiest general aviation airport through 2005.

Hollywood celebrities, politicians, and business executives are known to use this airport because it offers them convenience and anonymity.

The airport is also home to the Van Nuys FlyAway Bus service, which provides non-stop bus service from the airport to Los Angeles International Airport. This allows travelers to park their cars at Van Nuys and not have to deal with driving to LAX or parking fees at LAX.

Most news helicopters from the Los Angeles area are based at Van Nuys Airport.

1 Facilities
2 Incidents
3 Filming Locations
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Facilities

Van Nuys Airport covers 725 acres (293 ha) and has two runways:

Runway 16R/34L: 8,001 x 150 ft. (2,439 x 46 m), Surface: Asphalt
Runway 16L/34R: 4,011 x 75 ft. (1,223 x 23 m), Surface: Asphalt

Van nuys airport is the busiest general aviation airport in the world.

[edit] Incidents

In 2001, a FOX 11 news helicopter, a secondary helicopter that was previously owned by KTLA, crashed at Van Nuys airport after experiencing problems while covering the Academy Awards. The crew was rescued by KCAL helicopter pilot Larry Welk and KCBS helicopter pilot Aaron Fitzgerald.

A Cessna 525 Citation CJ1 twin-engine jet departing for Long Beach Airport crashed 0.5 miles (1 km) north of the airport on January 12, 2007, killing two people on board the plane. Both of them were pilots, and one of them is reported to be Frank Katzer, the owner of Sun Quest Executive Air Charter, the company that operates the aircraft.^[1]

[edit] Filming Locations

Many movies and television shows have been filmed at the airport, including a scene showing the arrival of Major Strasser in Casablanca, an episode of the TV show Alias, and several episodes of Season 5 of 24. The 1980s action-espionage series Airwolf used the Van Nuys Airport hangars regularly as the site of "Santini Air", the charter air service company owned and operated by Ernest Borgnine's character (Dominic Santini) in the series.

In 2005, a film documenting the history of Van Nuys Airport was released under the name One Six Right, named after the most popular runway at the airport.

Legend has it that Burbank Airport provided the setting for Humphrey Bogart's famous goodbye in the film Casablanca. But the airplane that departed with Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid, who played her Nazi-resisting husband, was actually filmed during a late-night shoot in Van Nuys, at what was then called Metropolitan Airport. All the runway scenes that included actors took place inside sound stage No. 1 at Warner Bros. studios in Burbank, where technicians re-created a dim Moroccan airstrip.

A major part of the science fiction classic Silent Running was filmed at the Van Nuys Airport in March 1971. The Domes from the spacecraft that contained the last surviving forests were filmed there. The main interiors were filmed aboard the decommissioned aircraft carrier USS Valley Forge (CV-45), which was docked at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard in Long Beach, California. Shortly after filming was completed, the carrier was scrapped. The forest environments were originally intended to be filmed in the Mitchell Park Domes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but the production budget forced the sequences to be shot in a newly-completed aircraft hangar in Van Nuys.