Moncton Monday Featured Airport (CYYR) [03/01]

[Jack Koskie]

 

In our second installment of our featured airport series, we will be featuring CFB Goose Bay (CYYR).

 

Canadian Forces Base (Goose Bay) is a Canadian Air Force base located in the municipality of Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The Goose Bay Airport is principally owned by the Department of National Defence, but is the major airport servicing the Labrador region of the province.  Runway 08/26 is 11,051 feet making Goose Bay boosting the longest runway east of Toronto. While the airport is serviced by the Canadian Border Services Agency, the office is small and international flights to/from Goose Bay are not normally handled by this airport, but the airport has been known to host many of the world’s largest aircraft including the Antonov 225 and the Airbus A380.

 

During the cold war, CFB Goose Bay was the site of the first US nuclear weapons in Canada, when in 1950 the US Air Force stationed 11 1561 Fat Man atomic bombs at the base some time in the summer and flew them out in December. In 1983, a NASA Boeing 747 transport aircraft carrying the Space Shuttle Enterprise landed at CFB Goose Bay to refuel while on its way to Europe for a tour in France and the United Kingdom. This was the first time that the shuttle had ever "landed" outside of the United States. On September 11th, 2001, because of the 9/11 attacks and part of Operation Yellow Ribbon, seven transatlantic flights landed in Goose Bay when the airspace in North America closed. It was one of the first Canadian airports to receive the diverted traffic.

 

On our March 1st installment of Moncton Monday, join us in Goose Bay (CYYR) as we reconnect the Canadian East Coast.