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FAIRFIELD, Utah County — The grand opening of a new $2.56 million runway, happening Saturday at the West Desert Airpark, is set to be a spectacle, with aerobatics, skydiving and a pumpkin drop to celebrate a major turning point for the small public airport.
"It's unusual to build a brand new runway," said Matt Maass, director of the Utah Division of Aeronautics. "It just isn't something that happens very often."
The old asphalt strip, which will serve as a taxiway going forward, was "a tiny runway," according to Alina Pringle, manager of the airpark. The landing zone was effectively shrinking, because the adjacent landfill kept getting taller and taller.
"It was a challenge," Pringle said, with pilots having to land at a steeper angle because of the landfill's berm. The new strip — 60 feet wide and almost a mile long — follows Federal Aviation Administration regulations for a small aircraft runway.
The project will fill multiple gaps in the community. West Desert Airpark, while privately owned, became a public runway in 2018. "There's no public use airport out in Cedar Valley, and it's growing with Eagle Mountain, Saratoga Springs, Cedar Fort and Fairfield," Pringle said.
The state of Utah funded 90% of the project, while the airpark put up the other 10%, according to Maass. Typically, the average lifespan on a runway is about 20 years, Maas said, though regular maintenance and inspections can extend the use of the strip to 40 years.
Demands for education
"There's a huge demand for airline pilots right now." Maass says, and local runways are seeing significant crowding from aviators going through training.
Along with improving safety for student pilots, the project will ease congestion at nearby airports. From "Spanish Fork Airport to Provo Airport, Tooele Airport, South Valley Airport, even as far north as Sky Park and Bountiful, those airports are very heavily used for training," according to Maass.
Institutions across the state are helping address the pilot shortage. Three universities — Utah State University, Utah Valley University and Southern Utah University — offer pilot training programs, along with private flight schools.
West Desert Airpark works with Cedar Valley High School, offering internships to students interested in maintaining airfields and working on aircraft.
"There's a huge demand for training new pilots," Maass said, "and we don't see that trend declining anytime soon."
Notably, the West Desert Flight school focuses on teaching backcountry flying, and the airpark is set to host the state's only grass landing strip, open to members of the aviation club.
"There's a network of gravel and dirt runways, some that are only accessible by mule or airplane," Pringle said. "They're amazing. You go land your airplane, pitch your tent camp in the wilderness. It's fantastic."
Residential and commercial future
The airpark currently has 29 buildings with a clubhouse, operated by the nonprofit group West Desert Aviators, with growth expected, according to Pringle. Preliminary plat approval has been given to build houses along almost 164 acres of land along the strip.
"I'm thinking we can start breaking ground in the fall of next year," Pringle says. One-acre residential lots with the ability to land a plane, "taxi over to your hangar home and relax."
It would be the second residential airpark in the state, the other being Grassy Meadows in Hurricane.
The city of Fairfield states in its July 2023 general plan that it wants to maintain "the image of a peaceful, productive, rural town," despite neighbors such as Eagle Mountain growing rapidly. They are unique in that there are "only about 140 landowners, two of which hold nearly half of the total land," the plan says.
Pringle says the fly-in fly-out houses, on one-acre lots, support that vision. "The people coming out here, they want rural. They want just to come in, fly recreationally, and then leave, generally speaking."
"It fits what Fairfield's goals are with being rural in nature and having more of a recreational setting," she said.
Commercial use in the small airport may see significant growth as well. Right now, the kind of commercial freight that would be flown through West Desert is "generally the more perishable, higher-value type freight," Maass says — fish, flowers, medicine, etc.
The airpark also hosts Rocky Mountain Kitplanes, the only light aircraft manufacturer in the state, according to Pringle.
But there are talks of including the airport in an inland port project area. "Our neighbors are developing to be included in inland port," Pringle said, and the airpark is "interested in conversations" to be included for future commercial as well.
Fall fest air show
Many pilots are expected to fly in for the airpark's first-ever air show Saturday, starting at 10 a.m. Local groups Red Thunder and Unfinished Business will be performing acrobatic tricks, an RV-6 team will fly a missing-man formation "honoring the founders and fellow aviators who have 'flown west' as we say," according to the flyer.
Food trucks, raffles, skydiving demonstrations and exotic car displays will provide additional entertainment.
After the aerial show, pilots and bombardiers are planning to drop mini pumpkins on a scarecrow while in flight, and parachute candy down on the crowd.
