Kinston Regional Jetport, also known as Stallings Field, is a public airport located three miles northwest of the central business district of Kinston, a city in Lenoir County, North Carolina, USA. The airport has a single runway that is one of the longest in the southeastern United States. It is mostly used for general aviation. The airport is used by charters for college teams traveling to and from East Carolina University in nearby Greenville for athletic events due to Greenville's short runways. The Kinston Regional Jetport features free parking as well as free wireless Internet access in its terminal. The terminal also houses several businesses, including Philbros Gift and Coffee Shop as well as Robert Franchise Transportation, a commercial transportation service. Rental car agencies are located in the terminal. One of the central features of the Kinston Regional Jetport is the Global TransPark, an industrial park adjoining the airport. It was built to bring high-tech industry and economic development to eastern North Carolina. Spirit AeroSystems will be manufacturing parts of the new Airbus A350 at its new Kinston facility at GTP.
History
Kinston Jetport originally was built in 1944 by the United States Navy. It opened in October as a United States Marine Corps flying training airfield known as Marine Corps Auxiliary Airfield Kinston, being an auxiliary to Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point. Naval Aviation Cadets received V-5 flight training along with basic flying indoctrination at the airfield until the facility was closed on 31 October 1945. As a result of the Cold War and the expansion of the United States Air Force, Kinston Air Base* was reopened on 17 October 1950 by the USAF Air Training Command, as a contract flying training school with T-34 Mentor, T-6 Texan and T-28 Trojan aircraft. In May 1952, the Air Force renamed Kinston Airfield as Stallings Air Base in memory of Kinston natives Lt Bruce Stallings, a P-51 Mustang pilot killed in March 1945, and his brother, Lt Harry Stallings, a B-29 Superfortress navigator killed in April 1945. In April 1957, ATC proposed that the contract training program at Stallings AB be closed. The recommendation was approved in September and on 1 October, flying training ended at Stallings. The base was formally inactivated on 27 November 1957. The present air terminal opened in July 1978.
Passenger service
provided service from Kinston to various destinations in North Carolina and Virginia from the early 1950s. As of 1975, Piedmont operated scheduled routes connecting Kinston to Atlanta, Fayetteville, Goldsboro, New Bern, Norfolk, Raleigh-Durham and Washington National, using a combination of Boeing 737, YS-11 and F-27 aircraft. Piedmont's successor US Airways served Kinston until 2002; its withdrawal left Kinston without scheduled service. Delta Air Lines began scheduled service to Kinston in 2005, but found the service consistently unprofitable, due in large part to many travelers driving to nearby Raleigh-Durham, and terminated the service in December 2007. Allegiant Air operated a twice weekly Kinston-Orlando flight from November 2006 to early 2008.
