As countless cars whiz by on Highway 168 a few miles away, the two pilots in their black pants, white dress shirts and epaulets on the shoulders chat at the counter of the Currituck County Regional Airport.

By Steven Hanf / Photo Above: Outer Banks Aviation’s Piper Saratoga charter plane, heading southeastward over the Currituck mainland. Photo Courtesy of Outer Banks Aviation. 

Their airplane carafe has been filled with steaming coffee from the terminal building and their cooler is full of ice. As one pilot pulls out the fleet credit card to pay for fuel, the other grabs a souvenir – a T-shirt emblazoned with Currituck’s KONX airport code. As their Citation jet idles just outside, the family flying with them on this August afternoon arrives. Mom and young daughters wait patiently in the cozy building while Dad declines the offer for help and transfers their bags from the rental car to the plane.

A few minutes later, they climb into the 10-person jet and soar toward Frederick, Maryland – bypassing all the summer traffic on I-64 and I-95, and most definitely bypassing the definition of your “standard” OBX vacation with SUVs crammed with gear inching their way to the rental house.

“Most small airports in a small county are very, very quiet, but because of our location, our traffic is pretty significant,” says Currituck Airport Director Willie Nelson. “Everything we have going on here, other than the stuff that’s based here, is tourism: people coming from outside of this county, outside of this state and sometimes outside of the country.”

Yes, there are folks who regularly fly to the Outer Banks from the United Kingdom, Paris and Germany, stopping first at a larger airport with customs and border control and then continuing on to busier-than-ever runways at Currituck and the Dare County Regional Airport. Stacy Ambrose, who heads the airport in Manteo, marvels at visitors from as far away as Cape Verde, or the steady stream of jets from Florida filled with eager anglers checking on the progress of their sportfishing yachts at local shops.

NBA great Michael Jordan’s $60 million Gulfstream G550 jet at the Dare County Regional Airport. Photo Courtesy of Stacy Ambrose

“You’re like, ‘OK, they just spent $60,000 to get here, another $60,000 to get back, and that’s just for the plane,’ ” Ambrose says with a laugh. “They’re gonna drop a hundred grand on going to the Outer Banks. I wouldn’t know about that, but it’s nice that they can do it.”

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, there are more than 5,000 public-use airports scattered across the country. This includes the mammoth familiar names like JFK and O’Hare down to the smallest of strips that service Ocracoke and the Wright Brothers historic site, FFA in Kill Devil Hills.

Thanks to the tourism scene, though, plenty of pilots have grown familiar with KONX in Currituck and KMQI in Manteo. (Side note: Sadly, KOBX, which would of course be the most amazing airport code for Dare County, belongs to the Obo Airport in Papua New Guinea, assigned decades ago by the International Air Transport Association long before “OBX” was a thing.)

Both airports surpassed 20,000 flight operations last year, defined as takeoff and landing. Some of those are your everyday occurrences: the banner planes, EMS Med Flight helicopter, or biplane and helicopter tours in their busy summer schedules at Manteo, or local pilots and Elizabeth City State University students logging their flight hours at Currituck.

Both airports, with their World War II roots, also still get some military traffic today, but the bulk of those other flight operations involve visitors.

Sometimes it’s for the “$100 burger,” as folks in the field jokingly call it.

“A guy could fly from Belhaven, Chesapeake, some local place in a small four-seater and be here within an hour,” Ambrose says. “He can bring his girlfriend up, park out here, we throw him the keys to the courtesy car, and they grab something to eat and check out the area.”

Then, pausing to think about how costs for fuel and other materials have increased, Ambrose reconsiders the math for this afternoon adventure: “It’s probably about a $300 burger now…”

Plenty of others in their smaller Cessnas and similar single-engine planes will come for a quick getaway to enjoy the beach. Nelson says every tie-down spot is occupied all weekend at Currituck.

And then there are the jets with their weeklong vacationer: In 2023, “transient” flights accounted for more than 3,800 trips to and from 36 states for the Manteo airport, and nearly 3,000 flights to and from 35 states for Currituck. Some are owned by the people who fly them, while others are part of a leasing service with pilots hired to ferry the family to the beach. Nelson says the typical inbound flight will involve an intricate dance that ensures every i is dotted and t crossed long before touchdown.

“It starts typically with a scheduler. They’ll call us and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got a Citation coming in at 4 o’clock this afternoon’ and they just want to make sure we’re here,” Nelson says. “The next call is from the dispatcher, and they want to know ‘we need X number of gallons of fuel, we need a ground power unit, we need lav service.’ ”

A private Challenger 300 jet loading up at the Currituck County Regional Airport after an Outer Banks vacation. Photo Courtesy of William Nelson

Ultimately, Nelson adds, the smaller planes getting the same service an airliner would when it lands. Preliminaries out of the way, a third call comes from the pilots. They want to make sure the first two people have touched base and also make sure their needs are met. For instance, is there a courtesy car they can take to their hotel? Oftentimes old sheriff cars or other surplus county vehicles, they’re stationed at the terminal to give the pilots a little short-term freedom.

When the plane touches down, Nelson and his crew get to work. The rental car that had been pre-arranged and delivered to the airport is driven out to the tarmac to meet the plane. The passengers disembark onto the red carpet with the ONX logo on their way inside for a drink or to use the bathroom while the airport workers load up their luggage and drive the car around to the building. The family then drives off to their rental house in Corolla or Carova or Duck.

“It’s luxury from the time they step on the jet to the time they get off the jet, and the same thing when they return,” Nelson says. “There’s no TSA, there’s no lines, there’s no nothing. We have a lot of families like that that we see yearly.”

Similar scenarios play out all summer at Manteo, and the appeal of both airports is obvious. Nelson points out that Currituck is the closest airport to the Outer Banks with the longest runway. Elizabeth City has a longer runway while being farther away, while Manteo has a shorter runway but is closer, especially for everyone who flies in to enjoy wind sports on Hatteras Island.

“We’re not in competition. We complement each other,” Nelson says. “These people are looking for the closest airport, and thankfully those airports are us – the smaller airports that can handle that traffic.”

Currituck actually offers a ground power unit and just got a machine for doing lavatory services. Manteo doesn’t have those but does offer something virtually unheard of at the county airport level: a temporary control tower that operates from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

It’s a testament to how much traffic the Dare County Regional Airport handles on a daily basis. On this early August day with storms approaching, the tower is fairly quiet, but dedicated air traffic controllers have been manning the room perched atop the terminal building that you reach via a narrow spiral staircase – think lighthouse steps – for five years now.

“Banner planes, bi-plane, helicopter doing tours, a jump plane, and then just regular traffic, it was just a little bit of a zoo, so the FAA recommended that we have a seasonal tower,” Ambrose says. “That’s the whole reason we got these guys, to keep it safe, so they are a huge asset to us in the summertime.”

With their popularity, well, soaring, both airports are bursting at the seams and have plans for major improvements in the works, paid for with a federal funding formula and grant programs. Currituck is building a new fuel farm and will be adding new hangars and apron space along with a new terminal building.

Manteo is getting new LED lights for the tarmac, a new airport beacon and windsock, better lighting for the grounds and a generator to support the terminal building operations should the power go out. What Dare County really needs, Ambrose adds, is more hangars. All 55 are full, with a waiting list of 22 people begging for space. Some are locals with planes and others are the typical OBX vacation homeowner.

“It’s a guy from Maryland or Northern Virginia who’s got a second house,” Ambrose explains. “So, they’ll keep a little rust-bucket vehicle in the hangar, land their plane, open the door, pull the old rust bucket out, put the plane in, shut the door, stay for a week or two, swap it out, take off back home.”

It’s enough to keep Ambrose and his crew plenty busy. The Manteo High School grad has worked at the airport since 1990 and became the manager three years ago, leading a staff of eight.

Outer Banks Aviation’s Piper Saratoga, a five-passenger charter plane shuttles Outer Banks visitors from various airports along the eastern seaboard. Photo Courtesy of Outer Banks Aviation.

While Ambrose was interested in flying and had taken the steps to become certified, the cost of the hobby eventually grounded him and he instead took to the water in his free time: “It’s kind of a strange story to tell somebody that I work here running the airport, but I’ve got my captain’s license instead of my pilot’s license,” he says with a laugh.

Conversely, Nelson is all-in when it comes to flying. The Ahoskie native has been flying for 12 years and has his flight instructor and commercial license ratings. After graduating from Elizabeth City State in 2018 and contemplating becoming a commercial pilot, he landed the Currituck airport job in 2019 and loves not traveling all the time. He’s part of a three-man crew.

And yes, while his business cards read “William Nelson,” he’s embraced the inevitable from everyone who walks into the terminal ready to get on the road again: “Willie Nelson, you can’t forget that,” he says with a laugh. “A lot of the pilots come in here and enjoy that. I just really enjoy getting to work with this type of industry, being really hands-on and having a chance to meet the customers, talk with the pilots and see what we can do to make their experience better.”

Steve Hanf spent the first 18 years of his life on Air Force bases and cannot resist the temptation to look skyward at the first hint of jet noise. The journalism teacher at First Flight High School especially enjoys watching aircraft circle the Wright Brothers Memorial outside his classroom window.

Author: Steve Hanf

Steve Hanf is a former professional sportswriter who teaches the journalism classes at First Flight High School. The dormant Nike Running Club app on his phone offers a reminder of the seven half-marathons and one full marathon he completed … several years ago. 

Steve Hanf

Steve Hanf is a former professional sportswriter who teaches the journalism classes at First Flight High School. The dormant Nike Running Club app on his phone offers a reminder of the seven half-marathons and one full marathon he completed … several years ago.