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The history of Mattituck Airport

Located in the town of Southold on Long Island’s North Fork, Mattituck Air Force Base (21N) is the area’s only privately owned and public-use airfield, occupying 18 acres and offering a 2,200-by-60-foot asphalt runway, in this case, 1/19. Approaches to the first of the two magnetic courses are made over Great Peconic Bay.

Established in 1946 after Parker Wickham returned from his WWII duty of maintaining Army Air Corps aircraft at their base in the Mojave Desert, he received 16 acres of his father’s farm for an airfield after his I return home, because, according to his father’s assessment, “There is no money in the potatoes anyway.” Before the asphalt, the “track” was nothing more than a strip of rough grass.

In addition to its use by private pilots who were able to land and position their aircraft close to their North Fork homes, their main revenue-generating item was their engine overhaul and repair facility, which was sold in 1984, repurchased by members of the family four years later. , and sold again in 1999 to Teledyne-Continental, which renamed it Teledyne-Mattituck Services on November 9 of that year.

As one of the oldest piston engine overhaul repair shops in the Northeast, it operated as a subsidiary of Teledyne Technologies, Inc., leasing the building to the Wickham family. It was later bought by China-based AVIC International, at which point it was renamed Mattituck Services, employing 70 at a time during its peak, or about 350 per year, and was responsible for at least a dozen engines per week. , or more than 500 per year.

Continental Motors listed its activities as “Engine Overhauls Built to Factory Service Tolerances; Factory Engine Installation and Sales Specialists; Major Power Plant and Airframe Maintenance; Propeller Maintenance and Repair; Your Source for Parts Inventory; 50 hours, 100 hours and annual inspections, inspection and repair schedules, and fuel system calibration and adjustments. “

For the 12 months ended September 27, 2007, the single-strip Mattituck airport averaged 33 movements per day, or 12,200 per year, and had 32 single-engine aircraft.

After Parker Wickham passed away in 2011, he transferred the property to his son, Jay, and his wife, Cyndi, who maintained and operated the airfield for five years. But a decline in general aviation due to its ever-increasing costs, leaving only a handful of aircraft still based there, and the closure of the repair shop in the summer of 2012, left him no choice but to sell the airport for four years. later. an intention it announced on June 3, 2016. Due to costly repairs, its fuel tanks had already been delivered to Albertson Marine, Inc. of Southold.

The Continental Motors store, closed after four years of decline in the general aviation business and its inability to remain profitable with two separate facilities, was integrated with its Fairhope, Alabama plant.

“Bluntly, I think both we and Lycoming have done a good job of pointing out the value of factory options and that has contributed across the board to the decline there,” according to Rhett Ross, CEO of Continental Motors. “It was not an easy decision, but that facility has been marginal for at least half a decade.”

The remaining 20 employees were laid off.

While the City of Southold deemed the cost of purchase prohibitive and its earning potential minimal, the “saviors” came in the form of Paul Pawlowski and Steve Marsh, partners in the Hudson City Savings Bank project on Main Road in Mattituck. Advising existing pilots to retire their aircraft by September 30, 2016, they intended to excavate the runway and demolish all the buildings, with the exception of the newer garage, car barn, and hangars, but for what others keep the airfield as it was. .

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