🇺🇸 Burke Lakefront Airport

Burke Lakefront Airport (KBKL), located in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, is a city-owned public general aviation airport. It is designated by the FAA as a reliever airport for Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, intended to handle a significant volume of smaller aircraft. The airport's operations primarily focus on corporate and general aviation, private and charter flights, medical transport services, and flight training.

The airport opened in August 1947 as the first downtown airport in the United States, built on Cleveland's lakefront, partly using landfill. Initially, it featured a 3,600-foot dirt runway. Major improvements were made during the tenure of Mayor Thomas Burke, and in 1958, the city council voted to name the airport in his honor, dedicating it on October 9, 1960. Over the decades, the facility has expanded to include hard-surface runways, a new terminal, and a control tower, enabling it to accommodate large multi-engine jet aircraft.

Notable features and historical events include hosting the Grand Prix of Cleveland from 1981 to 2007, an Indianapolis-style road race that utilized its runways, and the annual Cleveland National Air Show, which began in 1964 and continues each Labor Day weekend. Since 1998, Burke Lakefront Airport has also been the permanent home of the International Women's Air & Space Museum. In 2012, President Barack Obama held a rally on the airport's tarmac.

Currently, Burke Lakefront Airport remains a vital part of the Cleveland area's airport system, continuing its role in general and corporate aviation, as well as essential medical transport. It features two asphalt runways: 6L/24R, measuring 6,604 feet (2,013 meters), and 6R/24L, measuring 5,197 feet (1,584 meters). While it had commercial airline service in earlier decades, regular airline service from Burke was not consistently profitable in the late 1980s, and scheduled flights were halted in 2020. The control tower operates during specific hours, transitioning to a Class G airspace at other times.