Fairbanks International Airport

Fairbanks International Airport
FAIPAFA

Fairbanks International Airport

Fairbanks, United States · North America
North America America/Anchorage IVCA 51.2
35direct destinations
7airlines
4runways
3,597 mLongest runway
252Aircraft documented
1951opened

Fairbanks International Airport (IATA: FAI, ICAO: PAFA, FAA LID: FAI) is a state-owned public-use airport located three miles (5 km) southwest of the central business district of Fairbanks, a city in the Fairbanks North Star Borough of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is located in the South Van Horn census-designated place. Fairbanks was the smallest city in the United States with regularly scheduled non-stop international flights, as Condor offered weekly flights to Frankfurt during the summer tourist season. Air North is now the only international airline to offer scheduled charters with flights (to Canada).

Location

Mapa

64.815°N, 147.856°O · 134 m s. n. m. (439 ft)

General data

CountryUnited States
CityFairbanks
Coordinates64.815°N, 147.856°O
Elevation134 m s. n. m. (439 ft)
Time zoneAmerica/Anchorage
Longest runway3,597 m
OperatorDepartamento de Transportación y Servicios Públicos de Alaska
Opened1951
Direct destinations35

Runways · 4

02L/20R
Length3,597 m11,801 ft
Width46 m151 ft
SurfaceAsphalt
02W/20W
Length1,646 m5,400 ft
Width30 m98 ft
SurfaceWater
02R/20L
Length1,375 m4,511 ft
Width23 m75 ft
SurfaceAsphalt
02/20
Length884 m2,900 ft
Width23 m75 ft
SurfaceGRVL

Lengths and surfaces from the public OurAirports register; open runways only.

Radio frequencies · 7 Official publication

Tower

118.300

Ground

121.900

Clearance delivery

127.600

ATIS (automatic information)

124.400ATIS · MET

Approach

125.350APP · DEP · SECT 180-359127.100APP · DEP · SECT 360-179119.850
Look for a live feed on LiveATC External site; not every airport has a feed.

Frequencies from the official publication: FAA NASR, AIRAC 01 OCT 2026, checked on Oct 16, 2026. They change with each amendment: not for navigation without checking the current AIP. See the official publication In MHz.

History

The airport opened in 1951 and took over existing scheduled airline traffic to Fairbanks, which had previously used Ladd Army Airfield. Alaska Airlines used Fairbanks as its main hub in the 1950s, with service to Seattle and Portland as well as intrastate service to Anchorage, Nome and other destinations. By 1967, however, the airline shifted its Alaska hub to Anchorage; its Anchorage-Fairbanks service continues to this day. In the mid-1970s, following the development of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, Alaska Airlines and Braniff International offered "interchange service" (see transport hub) between Fairbanks and Houston via Anchorage, Seattle and Dallas. In 1982, following airline deregulation, Alaska Airlines and American Airlines began a similar interchange service using Boeing 727s. Pan American World Airways had also served Fairbanks since 1932. The station was originally opened after the acquisition of Pacific International Airways and used for short-haul services to Juneau, Seattle, Ketchikan, Whitehorse and other destinations. Pan Am intended to use Fairbanks as a stop for service to Asia as early as 1931, but initial difficulty in negotiating landing rights with the Soviet Union, followed by the outbreak of World War II, delayed these plans until decades later. Pan Am service to Fairbanks continued through the opening of FAI until 1965, when the Civil Aeronautics Board terminated Pan Am's rights to serve Alaska. Pan American World Airways eventually used Fairbanks as a stopover for transpacific service from New York and Seattle to Tokyo starting in September 1969. In 1974, Pan Am agreed to transfer its Fairbanks-Seattle service to Western Airlines, and requested that the CAB allow its New York-Tokyo service to be suspended from April 1975. Other carriers such as Japan Airlines and Korean Air began to use Fairbanks as a technical stop for transpacific cargo flights in the late 1970s. Condor started a seasonal route to Frankfurt in May 2001. The inbound flight stopped in Whitehorse, Canada, and the outbound one was nonstop. On October 11, 2009, the airport completed a new terminal and began demolishing the old terminal which was built in 1948. The new terminal is built around the modern TSA standards. In addition to architectural design and better security, the main terminal now has six jet-bridges (up from the former five). The 29,063-square-foot (2,700 m2) of custom-unitized curtain wall was designed and supplied by Overgaard Ltd. Hong Kong. The special design incorporates double low-e triple glazing. The new building's footprint is smaller than the old building.

What flies here

From our own logbook: 252 aircraft documented between 2006 and 2025.

252Aircraft documented
74,309Movements recorded
2006–2025Years on record

Types seen here

Airlines with documented aircraft

Busiest routes from here

A count of our own aircraft profiles, year by year, from the public United States flight records: it reflects what we have documented, not the airport’s total traffic.

Airlines operating here · 7

Airlines using it as a main base (hub)

Wright Air Service

Other airlines with direct routes

Airlines with current passenger routes from here, according to Wikipedia route tables cross-checked from both ends (October 2026).

Photo: Quintin Soloviev · CC BY-SA 4.0 · view original

Data from OurAirports (public domain) · destinations and airlines from Wikipedia route tables (CC BY-SA, 2026), unless another source is given · profile and photo from Wikidata/Wikimedia Commons (CC0 / CC) · summary and history from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).

Cite

To cite this page in academic work, an article or Wikipedia, choose the style and copy the reference. The access date is today.

This page was last updated on October 16, 2026

APA

Vuelopedia. (2026, October 16). Fairbanks International Airport (FAI). Retrieved October 17, 2026, from https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/FAI

MLA

“Fairbanks International Airport (FAI).” Vuelopedia, Fundación Poderia, 16 Oct. 2026, vuelopedia.org/en/airport/FAI. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.

Chicago

Vuelopedia. “Fairbanks International Airport (FAI).” Fundación Poderia. Last modified October 16, 2026. https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/FAI.

Harvard

Vuelopedia (2026) Fairbanks International Airport (FAI). Available at: https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/FAI (Accessed: 17 October 2026).

BibTeX

@misc{vuelopedia_en_airport_fai,
  author       = {{Vuelopedia}},
  title        = {{Fairbanks International Airport (FAI)}},
  publisher    = {Fundación Poderia},
  year         = {2026},
  date         = {2026-10-16},
  url          = {https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/FAI},
  howpublished = {\url{https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/FAI}},
  urldate      = {2026-10-17},
  note         = {Accessed 2026-10-17}
}

Wikipedia

{{cite web |url=https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/FAI |title=Fairbanks International Airport (FAI) |website=Vuelopedia |publisher=Fundación Poderia |date=2026-10-16 |access-date=2026-10-17 |language=en}}