Qualla: Yeager Airport

Yeager Airport: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit formulanone from Huntsville, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0. Yeager Airport sits on a flattened ridge top 947 feet above the Kanawha Valley, the kind of strip a pilot remembers because the ground falls away abruptly at both ends. The crews who built it in the 1940s removed something like 9 million cubic yards of dirt to flatten the mountain. Today the runway ends in beds of crushable concrete - Engineered Materials Arresting System, an FAA-mandated equivalent to the 1,000 feet of runway safety area the airport simply does not have room for. Most travelers do not know any of this. They notice the name. The airport is named for a Lincoln County farmboy who became the first pilot to break the sound barrier.

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Image: formulanone from Huntsville, United States | CC BY-SA 2.0

Yeager Airport: A Runway on a Mountaintop

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit formulanone from Huntsville, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0. Charleston's original Wertz Field closed during World War II when the federal government built a synthetic rubber plant across its approach path. The city began work on a replacement in 1944 - not down by the river where flat land was scarce, but on top of Coonskin Ridge east of ...

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Image: formulanone from Huntsville, United States | CC BY-SA 2.0

Yeager Airport: Named for the Right Pilot

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Analogue Kid, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1985 the airport took the name of Chuck Yeager, who grew up in Hamlin in nearby Lincoln County. On October 14, 1947 - the same year Kanawha Airport opened - Yeager flew the Bell X-1 to Mach 1.06 over Muroc Dry Lake in California, becoming the first human to fly faster than sou...

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Image: Analogue Kid | CC BY-SA 3.0

Yeager Airport: The 130th Airlift Wing

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit formulanone from Huntsville, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0. The military side of the field hosts the 130th Airlift Wing of the West Virginia Air National Guard, an Air Mobility Command-gained unit flying eight C-130 Hercules transports. The C-130 is the kind of aircraft that makes a Charleston airport useful far beyond Charleston - troops...

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Image: formulanone from Huntsville, United States | CC BY-SA 2.0

Yeager Airport: Hard-Earned Lessons

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit formulanone from Huntsville, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0. A mountain airport accumulates its share of accident history. In 1959 a Capital Airlines Constellation skidded down an embankment after a landing groundloop, killing two of 44 on board. In 1968, Piedmont Airlines Flight 230 hit trees on a fog-shrouded ILS approach to Runway 23 an...

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Image: formulanone from Huntsville, United States | CC BY-SA 2.0