Lufker Airport

Lufker Airport
Sign for Lufker Airport, off of Montauk Highway
IATA: none ICAO: none FAA LID: 49N
Summary
Airport type	Public use
Owner	Louis Lufker
Serves	East Moriches, New York
Elevation AMSL	57 ft / 17 m
Coordinates	40°49′29″N 072°45′03″W / 40.82472°N 72.75083°W / 40.82472; -72.75083Coordinates: 40°49′29″N 072°45′03″W / 40.82472°N 72.75083°W / 40.82472; -72.75083
Map
49N Location of airport in New York
Runways
Direction Length Surface ft m N/S 2,300 701 Turf
Statistics (2010)
Aircraft operations 2,500 Based aircraft 43
Source: Federal Aviation Administration

Lufker Airport (FAA LID: 49N, formerly O00) is a privately owned, public use airport located one nautical mile (2 km) northeast of the central business district of East Moriches, in Suffolk County, New York, United States.

It has a 36/18 2300 ft turf runway and has a pattern altitude of 800 ft MSL and shares a taxiway with Spadaro Airport.

The field is mainly used for banner towing, skydiving, glider towing, and flight instruction, and has been operational since the late 1940s. The airport was purchased April 1984 by Louis Lufker from Teddy Kijowski. The airfield is open to the public and has FAA Identifier: 49N. There is no control tower and operations are restricted to daylight hours.

The airport was originally a farm field owned by Teddy Kijowski's father. The farm was used to grow cabbage, melons etc. Teddy began taking flying lessons from Frog Chapman's Airfield in the late 1940s which was located one mile to the west of Lufker Airport in the same town of East Moriches (Frog Chapmans Airport has long been closed and the East Moriches Elementary School sits were the airport used to be). This happens to be the same airport (Chapmans) where Juan Trippe (The founder of Pan American Airlines) bought his first airplane, a "Curtiss Jenny" for the Harvard Aero Club. After Teddy soloed his first airplane, he began taking airplanes into his father's field. He used a dirt road that ran down the middle of the fields as his runway. The dirt road is where the current runway lays. Eventually, Teddy bought his own airplane and began keeping it on the field. He also turned the dirt road into a grass runway. Friends began to bring their airplanes there and people started to rent tie down spaces. It was not until 1963 that Bart Spadaro bought land next to Teddy's Airfield and decided to put a runway in that paralleled Teddy's runway. In the 1970s the airport was used for flight instruction and several airplanes were built from the ground up. Including one built by Donald Trumps cousin Al Creighton.