Bolingbrook's Clow International Airport


Bolingbrook's Clow International Airport is a public airport in Bolingbrook, a village in Will County, Illinois, United States. Located 29 miles southwest of the Chicago Loop, it is a small general aviation facility catering to private pilots, students, and commuter aircraft.
Clow features a $100 hamburger diner, , which serves breakfast and lunch.

History

The airport was originally a grass airstrip built by Oliver Boyd Clow in the 1950s. By 1989 it was named the best privately owned, public-use airport in Illinois. The airport was acquired by the Village of Bolingbrook in 2004. The village has expanded the airport, which include a widened runway, added taxiways, and landing glidepath lighting.
The airport was used as a location for the 1992 film with Tom Selleck and Don Ameche, which also had a cameo by O. Boyd Clow, the founder of the airport.
Oliver Boyd Clow called the airport Clow International on the spur of the moment when filing a flight plan. Boyd created the name, choosing the word international to reflect Chicago's mixed ethnicity, rather than the airport's size: Boyd's many friends and fellow pilots were of German, Polish, and other ethnic backgrounds now making their homes in Chicago. "It was named on a lark and borders on the ridiculous, but people remember it. Sometimes the absurd is easier to remember," says Boyd.

Facilities and aircraft

Bolingbrook's Clow International Airport covers an area of and contains one runway designated 18/36 with a 3,360 x 75 ft asphalt pavement.
For the 12-month period ending December 31, 2005, the airport had 50,000 aircraft operations, an average of 136 per day: 96% general aviation and 4% air taxi. There are 145 aircraft based at this airport: 83% single-engine, 10% ultralight, 3% multi-engine and 3% helicopter. The Fixed-Based Operator at Clow is JW Aviation.

Illinois Aviation Museum

The airport is also the location of the Illinois Aviation Museum at Bolingbrook that includes a collection of restored and replica aircraft.