Oneida County Airport

Oneida County Airport
Oneida County Airport
	IATA: UCA; ICAO: KUCA; FAA LID: UCA;
Summary
Airport type	Public
Owner	Oneida County
Serves	Utica, New York
Location	Whitestown, New York
Elevation AMSL	742 ft / 226 m
Coordinates	43°08′36″N 075°22′48″W / 43.14333°N 75.38000°W
Maps
	; FAA airport diagram
Runways
	Source: Federal Aviation Administration

Oneida County Airport (IATA: UCA, ICAO: KUCA, FAA LID: UCA) was a public airport in Whitestown in Oneida County, New York, six miles (9.7 km) northwest of downtown Utica. The airport covered 1,800 acres (7.3 km²) and had two runways.^[1]

Oneida County closed the airport in January 2007 and transferred operations to Griffiss International Airport, (formerly Griffiss Air Force Base) about five miles (8.0 km) to the north in Rome, New York.

Federal Aviation Administration records say the airport boarded 2,122 passengers in calendar year 2004 and 1,951 in 2005.^[2] The FAA's National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2007–2011 classified it as a general aviation airport.^[3]

History

In the 1940s, Utica Municipal Airport was a sod field (no paved runways) at 43°10′16″N 75°18′50″W / 43.171°N 75.314°W / 43.171; -75.314; Oneida County Airport may not have opened until after 1950.

In the 1960s, Mohawk Airlines stopped at Utica as did its successor Allegheny Airlines in the 1970s and Empire Airlines in the 1980s; the first jets were Mohawk BAC One-Elevens in 1965. Allegheny used Douglas DC-9s and BAC One-Elevens until early 1979 when it abandoned the market to Empire.^[4] Empire merged into Piedmont Airlines, which merged into USAir, the renamed Allegheny. USAir had a presence at UCA until 1995 when it ended jet flights and closed its maintenance base and reservations center.

UCA had no airline service after Continental Connection carrier CommutAir left on June 30, 2002. In its final years, UCA flights had been under the EAS program; declining ridership led the required subsidy to breach the $200 per passenger statutory cap.

Service shifted to nearby Griffiss International Airport when Oneida closed.

The former airport site was purchased from Oneida County by New York State and is now the home of the New York State Preparedness Training Center (SPTC).