Qualla: Tri-State Airport https://qualla.com/tri-state-airport en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:06 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/6/tri-state-airport-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Tri-State Airport https://qualla.com/tri-state-airport Tri-State Airport: Introduction https://qualla.com/tri-state-airport/ Photo credit United States Geological Survey (USGS), Public domain. On November 14, 1970, a chartered Southern Airways DC-9 carrying the Marshall University football team back to Huntington flew its final approach into a steady rain. The aircraft struck a hillside less than a mile short of the runway. All seventy-five people on board were killed - thirty-seven players, five coaches, two athletic trainers, the athletic director, twenty-five boosters, the flight crew. The Federal Aviation Administration would later record it as the worst sports-related air disaster in U.S. history. The hill is still there. So is the runway. And so is the airport, perched on a tabletop carved from a Wayne County ridge, where every approach and departure now carries that night in its institutional memory.

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Image: United States Geological Survey (USGS) | Public domain

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/6/tri-state-airport-wp/dnv6-tri-state-airport-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Tri-State Airport: An Airfield on a Mountain https://qualla.com/tri-state-airport/ Photo credit United States Geological Survey (USGS), Public domain. Tri-State Airport, officially Milton J. Ferguson Field, occupies 1,300 acres at 828 feet of elevation - a literal flat spot quarried out of the Appalachian foothills southwest of Huntington. The single asphalt runway, 12/30, runs 7,017 feet, the second-longest in West Virginia. T...

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Image: United States Geological Survey (USGS) | Public domain

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/6/tri-state-airport-wp/dnv6-tri-state-airport-an-airfield-on-a-mountain.mp3 0:06 2 full Tri-State Airport: The Slow Build of a Regional Hub https://qualla.com/tri-state-airport/ Photo credit United States Geological Survey (USGS), Public domain. Commercial service began here in late 1952 with Piedmont DC-3s, those workhorse twin propliners that defined regional aviation in the postwar South. Eastern Airlines and Allegheny Airlines arrived the following year. For two decades, passengers from Huntington flew on Convair 440...

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Image: United States Geological Survey (USGS) | Public domain

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/6/tri-state-airport-wp/dnv6-tri-state-airport-the-slow-build-of-a-regional-hub.mp3 0:06 3 full Tri-State Airport: The Marshall Crash https://qualla.com/tri-state-airport/ Photo credit United States Geological Survey (USGS), Public domain. In Huntington, the date November 14 still falls heavily on the calendar. Southern Airways Flight 932 had departed Kinston, North Carolina, after the Marshall Thundering Herd lost a road game to East Carolina. The flight crew descended through low ceilings and rain on approach to ...

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Image: United States Geological Survey (USGS) | Public domain

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/6/tri-state-airport-wp/dnv6-tri-state-airport-the-marshall-crash.mp3 0:06 4 full Tri-State Airport: After the Crash https://qualla.com/tri-state-airport/ Photo credit United States Geological Survey (USGS), Public domain. Two other crashes have marked Tri-State's history. On October 30, 1970 - just two weeks before the Marshall disaster - a U.S. Army U-8 Seminole went down three-quarters of a mile west of the airport during an emergency landing in rain and fog, killing three of the four aboard, in...

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Image: United States Geological Survey (USGS) | Public domain

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/6/tri-state-airport-wp/dnv6-tri-state-airport-after-the-crash.mp3 0:06 5 full