Аэропорт Бока-Ратон: История и современность

Airport in Florida

Boca Raton Airport is a state owned public use airport located two miles (3 km) northwest of the central business district of Boca Raton, a city in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States.

Boca Raton Airport covers an area of and has one asphalt paved runway designated 5/23, which measures 6,276 × 150 ft (1,913 × 46 m). Boca Raton Airport, also known as Boca Raton Army Airfield, was selected to house a military airfield for a number of geographic and practical reasons. Southern Florida's climate and physical geography are generally considered mild compared to most northern locations. Florida experiences a winter climate characteristic of the subtropics. Lacking snow or low temperatures enabled military operations to continue year round. Florida also has consistently flat terrain, an ideal feature when training new and inexperienced pilots. Its location adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico also provided ideal locations for flight training. Boca Raton was also chosen for practical purposes. In the early 1940s, Boca Raton's population numbered only 723. This enabled the United States government to take thousands of acres of land for its use without having to relocate a large number of people. However, this is not to say that the establishment of the military airfield was without controversy. A majority of the land was acquired from Japanese American farmers from the failing Yamato Colony, the land having been seized through the process of eminent domain, leaving many Japanese Americans little recourse in the early days of World War II. All of these conditions enabled construction of the military airfield to commence in June 1942.

While most of the Boca Raton Army Air Field was deactivated in 1946, more than were retained as the Boca Raton Air Force Auxiliary Field. Another were used in the 1950s for a secret project to produce stem rust spores for possible use as a biological agent against wheat production in the Soviet Union. Other parts of the World War II air base were returned to private ownership and developed. In 1959 the remainder of the base was turned over to the City of Boca Raton and to the State of Florida. and a single runway (of three original runways), completely rebuilt, became Boca Raton Airport. The remaining land became the campus of Florida Atlantic University.

The airport's first control tower opened in 2000. The tower was named after Philip Modder, who was the Chairman of the Boca Raton Airport Authority. Philip “Phil” Modder had pushed for Boca Raton, with its growing traffic of corporate jets, to have its own tower. The airport suffered more than $12 million worth of damage to hangars when Hurricane Wilma passed through the area in October 2005. In 1997, the restored original Aston Martin DB5 "Effects Car" from the James Bond film "Goldfinger" was stolen from a hangar at Boca Raton airport. A U. S. Customs and Border Protection facility was scheduled to open in 2017 in order to allow Boca Raton Airport to process passengers arriving on international flights. Boca Raton Airport's Customs and Border Protection facility opened in May 2018.

On August 8, 1956, a Sky Spray Fairchild C 82 Packet returning from a spraying mission experienced smoke coming from the #2 engine and a loss of power from the #1 engine on final approach to then Boca Raton Air Force Auxiliary Field. The aircraft in a banking manoeuvre lost control and crashed. All 5 occupants (2 crew, 3 passengers) died. On June 23, 2000, a Universal Jet Aviation Learjet 55 on a Visual flight rules (VFR) climb from BCT collided at an altitude of 2,400 feet 2.8 miles SW of Boca Raton with an Extra EA 300S which took off from Pompano Beach Airpark. Both aircraft crashed to the ground. All 3 occupants (2 crew, 1 passenger) on the Learjet 55 were killed along with the sole occupant of the Extra EA 300S.