Oneida County Airport


Oneida County Airport was a public airport in Whitestown in Oneida County, New York, six miles northwest of downtown Utica. The airport covered and had two runways.
Oneida County closed the airport in January 2007 and transferred operations to Griffiss International Airport,
about five miles to the north in Rome, New York.
Federal Aviation Administration records say the airport boarded 2,122 passengers in calendar year 2004 and 1,951 in 2005. The FAA's National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2007–2011 classified it as a general aviation airport.

History

In the 1940s Utica Municipal Airport was a sod field at ; Oneida County Airport may not have opened until after 1950.
In the 1960s Mohawk Airlines stopped at Utica, and Empire Airlines in the 1980s; the first jets were Mohawk BAC 1-11s in 1965. Both airlines would become part of USAir, which had a presence at UCA until 1995 when USAir ended jet flights and closed its maintenance base and reservations center.
UCA had no airline service after Continental Connection carrier CommutAir left on June 30, 2002. In its final years UCA flights had been under the EAS program; declining ridership led the required subsidy to breach the $200 per passenger statutory cap.
Service shifted to nearby Griffiss International Airport when Oneida closed.