Falcon Field Airport (KFFZ)
Two runways, a control tower, and a field that has been training pilots since 1941. Here's why that matters to you.
The field
Falcon Field sits about six miles northeast of downtown Mesa, at a field elevation of 1,394 feet. It has two parallel runways: 4R/22L, the 5,100-foot main runway, and 4L/22R, a 3,800-foot parallel added in the 1980s. It is a towered airport with an active control tower, and one of the busiest general aviation fields in Arizona.
We're in Hangar 120, at 4800 E Falcon Dr. Directions and contact details.
A field built to train pilots — in 1941
Falcon Field didn't grow into a training airport. It was built as one.
It opened on 14 September 1941 as the No. 4 British Flying Training School, on empty desert at the northern edge of Mesa. Britain was at war, and training pilots at home had become impractical — Luftwaffe raids and English weather made it both dangerous and slow. So the RAF sent its cadets to Arizona, where the skies were clear, the visibility enormous, and nobody was shooting at them.
The first training flight went up in a Boeing PT-17 Stearman. Between 1941 and 1945, more than 2,300 British cadets earned their wings here, along with American pilots. Some never went home — there's a memorial in Mesa to the cadets who died during training.
Which is a long way of saying: when you fly your first lesson out of Falcon Field, you're using an airport that was purpose-built, eighty-odd years ago, for exactly what you're doing.
Why it's a good place to learn
You'll work a control tower from day one
Pilots trained at quiet, untowered fields often find their first towered airport intimidating — and it usually arrives at the worst moment, on a cross-country somewhere unfamiliar. Learn here and tower communication is simply how flying has always worked for you.
Two parallel runways
Parallel operations mean less time holding for traffic and more of your paid Hobbs time actually flying. It also means you'll practise parallel-runway awareness, which is a genuinely useful habit.
Practice areas close by
Open desert to the north and east means you're at the practice area within minutes. At schools that have to transit a long way to work on maneuvers, you're paying for the commute at the same hourly rate.
Arizona flying weather
Clear skies most of the year mean lessons rarely cancel for weather — the single biggest cause of stalled training elsewhere. Summer brings heat and monsoon season, and learning density altitude where it genuinely bites makes you a better pilot.
Airspace worth knowing
Falcon Field sits east of Phoenix Sky Harbor's Class B airspace. Learning here means learning to operate near busy Class B without living inside it — you'll get comfortable with airspace boundaries, transitions and flight following as a matter of routine.
To the east are the Superstition Mountains, which give you terrain, genuine cross-country navigation practice, and some of the best scenery you'll fly over anywhere.
While you're on the field
The Commemorative Air Force's Arizona Wing operates the Airbase Arizona museum at Falcon Field, including a memorial to the RAF cadets who trained here. Worth an hour if you're bringing someone along to your lesson.
See more of the field and our aircraft in the photo gallery.
Fly from Falcon Field
Book a $199 discovery flight and take the controls yourself, from an airport that has been teaching people to fly since 1941.