Fullerton Municipal Airport

Fullerton Municipal Airport owned and operated by the City of Fullerton, is the last strictly general aviation airfield still operating in Orange County, California.

The airport is located in the southwestern corner of Fullerton on Commonwealth Avenue, northeast of the junction of the Santa Ana and Riverside Freeways. The airport and its industrial park are surrounded by residential areas. It is popular among private pilots traveling to nearby attractions such as Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm.

Fullerton Municipal Airport covers 86 acres (350,000 m2) and has one runway and three heliports:

Runway 6/24: 3,121 × 75 ft (951 × 23 m), Surface: Asphalt

Heliport H1: 37 × 37 ft (11 × 11 m), Surface: Concrete

Heliport H2: 37 × 37 ft (11 × 11 m), Surface: Concrete

Heliport H3: 37 × 37 ft (11 × 11 m), Surface: Concrete

Its control tower handles an average of 262 flight operations per day.

The airport and surrounding areas have seen their share of aircraft accidents. Residents have complained that pilots often deviate from their mandated approach to the airport, following the BNSF Railway tracks. Pilots, in turn, complain that Fullerton and the neighboring city of Buena Park have permitted too much dense residential development in the area, which had been almost entirely agricultural when the airport was first constructed.

Since 1962, no fewer than 121 planes have crashed at or near the airport, killing a total of 19. Most noteworthy of these was on September 25, 2004 when a 1985 Stout Bushmaster 2000 (a spinoff of a Ford Tri-Motor) crashed during an airport exhibition. The plane's rudder locked to a left position during the takeoff roll, causing the plane to veer left off the runway. The pilot was able to get the plane airborne before rolling into a crowd of spectators; the plane then narrowly missed the airport's control tower, rolled hard left and crashed onto a busy thoroughfare. In all, four were injured: the 2-person flight crew and two in a moving car. The cause of the accident was due to failure of the flight crew to remove a gust lock--improvised from a nylon cargo strap--from the plane's empennage before flight.