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Airport recommendation - Gilbert / Mesa AZ area

slngsht

Well Known Member
A good friend of mine is relocating to Arizona to Gilbert/ Mesa area.

Any recommendations for great GA airports in area? any insight into availability of hangar space, fuel cost, etc... is appreciated.

Thanks.
 
A good friend of mine is relocating to Arizona to Gilbert/ Mesa area.

Any recommendations for great GA airports in area? any insight into availability of hangar space, fuel cost, etc... is appreciated.

Thanks.

Lots of reliever airports around the valley. Chandler, Falcon Field and Mesa Gateway are all convenient to that area. All of them are far enough away from downtown to not be horribly impacted by the PHX class B.

Gateway has limited airline operations, but there's quite a bit of flight training and light jet activity (Cessna, Beech and Embraer all have service centers there). Falcon Field and Chandler are just big GA airports.

I'd stay away from Scottsdale. Lots of biz-jets and they had a multi year wait for T-hangars the last time I checked. Deer Valley has a Flight school there that trains students for the Chinese Airlines and there is a TON of student traffic in and out of there.
 
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Just to add one more option. Coolidge is about a 45 minute drive from Gilbert. It's a small GA airport that has hangar space available immediately.

Chandler would most likely be your best bet as there is a a very active builder community and lots of GA activity, not to mention its much closer.
 
More specific

Gilbert is covers a lot of ground. Do you have the main cross roads to be able to better guide you? Depending on where you are, your options could be Chandler, Falcon, Gateway or Stellar.

For temporary parking Stellar is cheap and easy to get to from anywhere in Gilbert. Chandler is a dual runway with tower. Pretty easy to fly in and out of but considerable training traffic. Gateway as noted has airline traffic but is very easy to fly in an out of. Falcon is dual runway with a tower and can be a real fur ball to operate in.

Forget Deer Valley. This is like Saturday at Oshkosh almost everyday of the week. The only real difference is most of the pilots know what they are doing:eek::eek:
 
Forget Deer Valley. This is like Saturday at Oshkosh almost everyday of the week. The only real difference is most of the pilots know what they are doing:eek::eek:

Deer Valley is a trip down memory lane. When I first moved to PHX I needed a short term gig so I instructed at PanAm (TransPac) in the Chinese airline training program for a while.

Out of my first 4 students, only 1 had ever driven a car, and none of them had ever been on an airplane before the were shipped over to the States for flight training.

I flew 800 hours of dual in 10 months. 4 flights a day, 5 days a week, no weather cancellations. IIRC, it's one of the busiest GA airports in the country.
 
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