A Tale of Two Airports

For over 50 years I have watched the development of the Northern Virginia general aviation airports.  For almost 15 years I was deeply involved in the development of the Leesburg Airport.  In 1957, shortly after getting my pilots license at an airport in Alexandria, now long gone, I took some of my family for a flight out of the Leesburg Airport, then know locally as Godfrey’s cow pasture.  Arthur Godfrey, a radio and early television personality, gave this airfield land to the Town so they could swap it for the land where the Leesburg Airport now stands.  The new Godfrey Field opened with a paved runway in the early 1960s.  I was a Naval Aviator by this time.  I next visited this airport after leaving the Navy in the mid 60s and made several glider flights from there.  I returned again in 1980 to find the airport all but abandoned.

I quit my day job, and for almost 15 years, took on the task of changing Godfrey Field from a field into a real airport.  For most of these years the strong bond I formed with my company and the Town of Leesburg created great things at the airport.  I attracted a major FAA facility to the airport, which financed the building of water and sewer lines from the Rt. 15 by-pass down to the airport.  I built a jet fuel farm and 50 hangars, including the first jet hangar.  By the end of the 1980s the based aircraft population had grown to over 200, fifteen of these were business jets.

Then the political climate changed and the Town Government took over.  The entrepreneurial spirit died, and apparently so did the airport, at least financially and as an economic engine.  Today there is one business jet at the Leesburg Airport.  The jet hangars are all but empty as is the terminal building except for two flight schools.

All the other general aviation airports in northern Virginia closed in the 1970s except Manassas, Leesburg’s main competition.  The Manassas Airport was founded at its current location in 1963 with a single 3,700' x 100' paved runway, a rotating beacon, maintenance hangar and office.  This was almost identical to the Leesburg Airport at that time.  But today the there are stark differences.  Over 40 business jets are based at Manassas and one at Leesburg.  At Leesburg there are 3 hangars over 12,000 square feet for business jets.  At Manassas there are 18 hangars in this class.  Almost 3 million gallons of jet fuel are consumed annually at Manassas and only 200,000 gallons at Leesburg.  Major companies like Micron Technology occupy land adjacent to the airport.  Nothing even close to that is in Leesburg.

Manassas Airport has grown into a major reliever airport for the Washington region, while the Leesburg Airport struggles.

I have some thoughts about how Leesburg could begin to play catch up or at least stop stagnating.  I will save that for another post, but first I would like to have your thoughts.  Leave your comments here, or send me an email.