Opened as a training airfield during World War II, the facility was operated by the U.S. Air Force as Larson Air Force Base until On 24 June 1969, Japan Airlines Flight 90, a Convair 880, crashed on take-off from runway 32R at Grant County International Airport in Moses Lake, Washington. The power was reduced on the number four engine during take-off, however, the aircraft continued to yaw to the right until the number four engine struck and slid off the runway. It burst into flames, killing three of the five crew members on board. The probable cause was a "delayed corrective action during a simulated critical-engine-out takeoff maneuver resulting in an excessive sideslip from which full recovery could not be effected." In September 2019 Boeing stored 100 of its undelivered 737 MAX airplanes at the Moses Lake airport while it awaits clearance from the FAA and other aviation regulators to return the jet to commercial service. Passenger air service to and from Moses Lake ended on 8 June 2010.
Overview
With and a main runway, it is one of the largest airports in the United States. Moses Lake is famous for good flying weather, as it is located on the east side of the Cascade Range, in the semi-arid desert of centralWashington. Grant County International Airport was an alternate landing site for the NASA Space Shuttle. Scheduled passenger flights on Big Sky Airlines to Boise and Portland were discontinued on September 1, 2006. The service was subsidized by the Essential Air Service program. United Express, operated by SkyWest Airlines offered nonstop flights to Seattle from June 2009 until June 2010. The airport currently has no commercial passenger air service. The airport was used for heavy jet training by Japan Airlines for over forty years, until the closing of their training offices In November 1974, the airport hosted a new Supersonic TransportConcorde for a month during FAA certification testing. It is also utilized by the U.S. Air Force and Boeing as a testing facility. Most of the traffic at the airport is general and military aviation. In 2011, the 92nd Air Refueling Wing at Fairchild AFB in Spokane temporarily moved its KC-135 R/T fleet and operations to Moses Lake while Fairchild's runway underwent reconstruction and other infrastructure improvements, to include an upgrade to the base's aviation fuel distribution system. The main campus for Big Bend Community College is also located on the grounds of the airport. After the grounding of all Boeing 737 MAXs from March 2019, approximately 50 of the grounded airplanes were parked at the airport. This was originally seen as an economic opportunity for the airport, but later caused concern as the number of planes stored kept increasing, to approximately 130 by October 2019.
Facilities and aircraft
Grant Co. International Airport covers an area of at an elevation of above sea level. It has five runways:
Runway 14L/32R is, with an asphalt/concrete surface
Runway 4/22 is, with an asphalt/concrete surface
Runway 9/27 is, with a concrete surface
Runway 18/36 is, with an asphalt surface
Runway 14R/32L is, with a concrete surface
For the 12-month period ending December 31, 2018, the airport had 77,335 aircraft operations, an average of 212 per day: 61% general aviation, 15% military, 10% air carrier and 14% air taxi. At that time there were 49 fixed-wing aircraft and 2 gliders based at this airport: 84% single-engine, 12% multi-engine, and 4% glider.
