ElkoRegional Airport, formerly Elko Municipal Airport, is a mile west of downtown Elko, in Elko County, Nevada. The airport was named J.C. Harris Field in 1975 in honor of Jess C. Harris, a sheriff from Elko known as "The Flying Sheriff".
History
On April 6, 1926, when it was called Elko Airport, the airfield was the terminus for the first scheduled air mailrun in the United States, flown by Varney Air Lines. Varney was a predecessor of United Air Lines. By 1931 Elko was a stop on a passenger flight between New York City and San Francisco. In a 1931 timetable United Airlines predecessor National Air Transport is shown flying New York City–Cleveland–Toledo–Chicago, connecting to Boeing Air Transport's flight to Iowa City–Des Moines–Omaha–Lincoln–North Platte–Cheyenne–Rock Springs–Salt Lake City–Elko, and on to Reno–Sacramento–Oakland. Scheduled time of this flight was 31 hours westbound and 28 hours eastbound. United later served Elko with Boeing 247s, Douglas DC-3s, Douglas DC-6Bs and Convair 340s. Starting in November 1977 United Boeing 737-200s operated round trip San Francisco - Reno - Elko - Ely - Salt Lake City; in 1982 United ended this flight, which until 1970 had used Douglas DC-6Bs, United's last piston powered service in the U.S. In 1970 United replaced the DC-6 service with Convair 580s operated by Frontier Airlines ; the flights used the "UA" airline code until 737s took over. Casino Express Airlines was based in Elko and supported the localcasino industry, flying scheduled charter Boeing 737-200s from Elko to many cities starting in the late 1980s. In 1994 Casino Express scheduled weekend only flights nonstop between Elko and Portland, OR and Seattle with McDonnell Douglas MD-80s. Casino Express eventually changed its name to Xtra Airways and later ended jet service to Elko. Royal West Airlines flew BAe 146-200s nonstop to Las Vegas in 1987. SkyWest Airlines began serving Elko as an independent commuter carrier in the early 1980s, flying Swearingen Metros to Reno, Salt Lake City and Ely. By the late 1980s SkyWest was serving the airport as Western Express for Western Airlines via code sharing agreement with flights mainly to Salt Lake City on Metros. Following the merger of Western into Delta Air Lines, SkyWest became a Delta Connection carrier and in 1989 was flying Embraer EMB-120 Brasilias to Salt Lake City in addition to Metro service. SkyWest continues to serve the airport as a Delta Connection carrier and is the only airline at Elko.
Facilities
Elko Regional Airport covers and has two asphalt runways: 5/23 is 7,214 x 150 ft and 12/30 is 2,871 x 60 ft. In the year ending August 31, 2007 the airport had 16,520 aircraft operations, average 45 per day: 73% general aviation, 27% air taxi and <1% military. 69 aircraft were then based at this airport: 77% single-engine, 10% multi-engine, 6% jet and 7% helicopter.
