Colonel James Jabara Airport


Colonel James Jabara Airport is a public airport located northeast of the central business district of Wichita, a city in Sedgwick County, Kansas, United States. It is named in honor of World War II and Korean War flying ace James Jabara, an American of Lebanese descent who has the distinction of being the first American jet ace.
Although most U.S. airports use the same three-letter location identifier for the FAA and IATA, Colonel James Jabara Airport is assigned AAO by the FAA but has no designation from the IATA.

Facilities and aircraft

Colonel James Jabara Airport covers an area of which contains one runway.
  • Runway 18/36:, surface: concrete
For 12-month period ending August 13, 2019, the airport had 38,300 aircraft operations, an average of 104 per day: 97% general aviation and 3% air taxi. In November 2021, there were 113 aircraft based at this airport: 60 single-engine, 31 multi-engine, 20 jet aircraft, 1 helicopter and 1 military.
LifeSave Transport, A private medevac company owned by Air Methods, is based out of this airport. They operate a fixed wing and ground operations out of their building.
Colonel James Jabara Airport used to have a dedicated helipad, but it was closed and now has an X painted over the helipad.

Incidents

On November 20, 2013, at approximately 9:30 pm CST, a Boeing 747-400 Dreamlifter mistakenly landed at the Colonel James Jabara Airport, which was on the same heading as its destination, McConnell Air Force Base. After landing at McConnell, the plane was to taxi over to nearby Spirit AeroSystems, and pick up some fuselage parts for the assembly of Boeing 787 Dreamliners in Everett, Washington. The plane successfully took off at 1:15 pm CST on November 21 and landed at nearby McConnell AFB. The NTSB opened an investigation about the wrong landing. The NTSB published the final report in September 2020 and found the probable causes of this incident to be: "the flight crew's failure to properly identify the airport and runway of intended landing...contributing to
the incident was the flight crew's failure to follow company procedures for crosschecking navigational
information and visual cues to verify the airport and runway of intended landing."

Nearby airports

Other airports in Wichita
Other airports in metro
Other airports in region