Burley Municipal Airport
Burley Municipal Airport is a municipal airport in Burley, Idaho. The airport was rededicated as Burley J R Jack Simplot Airport in October 2002, honoring J. R. "Jack" Simplot.
History
The Burley Municipal Airport was dedicated on July 4, 1930. A stop on the Contract Air Mail Route 5 from Salt Lake City to Pasco, the airport began its life servicing Air Mail aircraft.The first airline flights were Empire Airlines Boeing 247s in 1946; successors West Coast Airlines and Air West landed at Burley until 1969.
Facilities
The airport covers and has two asphalt runways: 2/20 is 4,094 x 80 ft and 6/24 is 4,067 x 75 ft.In the year ending February 10, 2005, the airport had 27,750 aircraft operations, average 76 per day: 98% general aviation, 1% air taxi and <1% military. 56 aircraft are based at this airport:
84% single-engine, 10% multi-engine, 4% jet and 2% ultralight.
Accidents and incidents
- On April 13, 2022, a Cessna 208B Caravan registration N928JP on a cargo flight operated by Gem Air from Salt Lake City International Airport crashed into the agglomerate stack of Gem State Processing food processing plant while on approach to the airport. The high temperature steam exhaust, also from the plant, may have contributed to the crash by not only visually obscuring the runway from the pilot, but also lowering the air density causing the aircraft to lose altitude. The pilot, who was the only occupant on board, was fatally injured.