Tupelo Regional Airport


Tupelo Regional Airport is a public use airport located west of the central business district of Tupelo, a city in Lee County, Mississippi, United States. It is owned by the Tupelo Airport Authority. The airport is mostly used for general aviation, but is also served by one commercial airline with scheduled passenger service subsidized by the Essential Air Service program. Many college football teams visiting the University of Mississippi, 49 miles west in Oxford, fly into Tupelo.
As per the Federal Aviation Administration, this airport had 15,985 passenger boardings in calendar year 2008, 13,319 in 2009, and 12,749 in 2010. The National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2011–2015 categorized it as a primary commercial service airport.

Facilities and aircraft

Tupelo Regional Airport covers an area of at an elevation of above mean sea level. It has one runway designated 18/36 with an asphalt surface measuring.
For the 12-month period ending December 31, 2011, the airport had 50,916 aircraft operations, an average of 139 per day: 56% general aviation, 38% military, 6% air taxi, and <1% scheduled commercial. At that time there were 68 aircraft based at this airport: 35% single-engine, 22% multi-engine, 9% jet, 3% helicopter, and 31% military. An additional primary function of the airport is to serve as an aircraft boneyard, including scrapping, parts recycling and aircraft storage.

Historical Air Service

Back in the '70s, Tupelo was served by Southern Airways with direct flights to Columbus, Memphis, and Tuscaloosa using Martin 404 piston airliners. In the '80s, Scheduled Skyways began service to Memphis and Meridian using Nord 262s and Swearingen Metroliners. When Memphis began growing as a Northwest hub, Northwest Airlink began Saab 340 turboprop service to Tupelo, with a continuing flight to Muscle Shoals. During the merger between Northwest and Delta, the Muscle Shoals flight was cut, and eventually all Northwest Airlink service was replaced by Delta Connection. Delta Connection had direct flights to Memphis and Atlanta, with the Memphis flight eventually being cut. They served Tupelo with Bombardier CRJ-200 aircraft. In 2012, after Delta Connection left, Silver Airways began service to Greenville, Muscle Shoals, and Atlanta using Saab 340s. Silver Airways terminated service in October 2014 and was replaced by Seaport Airway. Seaport flew for one year, leaving at the end of October 2015. The Airport was without service for five months until April 2016 when Contour Airlines began service with five daily flights to Nashville. Since April 2016, Contour has upgraded service three times going from twin turboprop with nine seat to ERJ35s. Tupelo's annual enplanements have steadily grown and the Airport has once again obtained Primary Airport status with the FAA in 2017, 2018 and 2019.

Airlines and destinations

Passenger

began daily flights to Nashville using British Aerospace Jetstream 31 turboprop aircraft. On April 1, 2016, this service was upgraded to the Embraer E135 regional jet.

Cargo

Tupelo has no scheduled cargo service, but gets various cargo charters from time to time, most notably Embraer EMB120s by Berry Aviation and ATR 72s by FedEx.

Army aviation support facility

Mississippi Army National Guard has Apache and Lakota helicopters based at the facility.
Boeing C-32

Statistics

RankCity & IATA codePassengersAirline
1Nashville, TN 2,140Contour