The History of Mattituck Airport

Found in the City of Southold on Lengthy Island’s North Fork, Mattituck Air Foundation (21N) is the area’s only privately owned, public-use airfield, occupying 18 acres and providing a one 2,200- by 60-foot asphalt runway-in this scenario, 1/19. Techniques to the very first of the two magnetic headings are carried out above the Wonderful Peconic Bay.

Established in 1946 just after Parker Wickham returned from his Earth War II duty of keeping Army Air Corps airplanes at his Mojave Desert foundation, he was presented 16 acres of his father’s farm for an airfield after his return home, for the reason that, according to his father’s assessment, “You will find no dollars in potatoes, anyhow.” Prior to the asphalt, the “runway” was absolutely nothing extra than a strip of moved grass.

Aside from its use by personal pilots who have been equipped to land and foundation their plane near their North Fork properties, its theory, profits-building aspect was its engine maintenance and overhaul facility, which was bought in 1984, repurchased by loved ones associates four many years later on, and marketed all over again in 1999 to Teledyne-Continental, which renamed it Teledyne-Mattituck Services on November 9 of that year.

As 1 of the northeast’s longest established piston motor overhaul repair stores, it operated as a subsidiary of Teledyne Technologies, Inc., leasing the setting up from the Wickham household. It was subsequently obtained by China-centered AVIC Intercontinental, at which time it was renamed Mattituck Expert services, utilizing 70 at a time during its peak, or some 350 per annum, and was accountable for at least a dozen engines per 7 days, or additional than 500 for each 12 months.

Continental Motors stated its things to do as “engine overhauls crafted to manufacturing facility service tolerances manufacturing unit motor sales and set up specialists main powerplant and airframe servicing propeller routine maintenance and mend your in-stock source for components 50-hour, 100-hour, and annual inspections inspection mend courses and fuel system calibration and adjustments.”

For the 12 months ended on September 27, 2007, the one-strip Mattituck Airport averaged 33 movements for every working day, or 12,200 per 12 months, and counted 32 single-engine based plane.

After Parker Wickham passed in 2011, he ceded possession to his son, Jay, and his wife, Cyndi, who taken care of and operated the airfield for 5 several years. But a drop in typical aviation thanks to its ever-climbing expenses, leaving only a handful of airplanes nonetheless based there, and the closing of the maintenance shop in the summertime of 2012, still left him very little preference but to offer the airport four yrs later, an intention he declared on June 3, 2016. Since of high-priced repairs, its gas tanks had by now been given to Albertson Marine, Inc., of Southold.

The Continental Motors’ store alone, closed just after 4 several years of declining general aviation small business and its inability to continue to be financially rewarding with two individual facilities, was built-in with its Fairhope, Alabama, plant.

“Incredibly bluntly, I consider the two of us and Lycoming have done a excellent career of pointing out the price of manufacturing unit options and that has produced a contribution across the board to the drop there,” in accordance to Rhett Ross, Continental Motors’ CEO. “It was not an effortless final decision, but that facility has been marginal for at least the fifty percent decade.”

All 20 remaining staff were being laid off.

While the City of Southold deemed the order price tag-prohibitive and its revenue possible nominal, “saviors” arrived in the type of Paul Pawlowski and Steve Marsh, companions in the Hudson Metropolis Discounts Bank challenge on Most important Street in Mattituck. Advising present pilots to get rid of their plane by September 30 of 2016, they meant to excavate the runway and demolish all properties, with the exception of the carriage property, the car barn, and the most recent hangars, but normally preserve the airfield as it had been.