Plane spotting road trip : Day 8 July 3rd 2024 Missoula MT => Pullman WA - 4 airfields
Another cloudless and warm day, we left Missoula Montana feeling rather underwhelmed with the city, my hi-light certainly being the airport. We headed west along the I90 across a time zone into Coeur D'Alene Idaho. We did pass Shoshone County Airport in Smelterville and there were no aircraft present. We headed into the city and it was everything I thought Missoula would be. We bought a simple lunch to eat on the beach of Lake Coeur D'Alene and I did not realize this was the home of Brooks Seaplane Services at the end of a little pier. They have a 1954 Beech 18 on floats offering pleasure flights for $150 which I would have liked to have done had I known. They also had a 1975 Citabria present.
N33JP ~ Beech D18S ~ Brooks Seaplane Services ~ ex N3533B
It is a beautiful town and we would like to go back one day and stay in the resort located where the first photo was taken. We headed north a few miles to the suburb of Hayden where the Pappy Boyington airport is located, code KCOE. There are currently no scheduled flights to this airport, but there is the head office and maintenance base for Fedex Feeder carrier Empire Airlines with a large hangar to the north west and a pretty busy bizjet and GA scene. The largest was Tony Robbins 737 BBJ, plus being the height of summer there were numerous Air Tractor fire bombers. Google maps shows a Bird Aviation and Invention Museum, which if it is still around is airside, un-signposted and not all accessible. Another interesting business amidst all the GA was a company that specializes in the Ryan Navion and they also had the remains of a very rare Twin Navion present.
N850TR ~ Boeing 737-7CG (BBJ) - Tony Robbins ~ ex N800GK, N888GW, P4-GJC, VP-BMC, N888NY, N737L & P4-SJM
N10122 ~ Air Tractor AT-802A ~ Aero Spray
N819FX ~ ATR 72-212 (F) ~ Empire Airlines (Fedex Feeder) ~ ex D-AEWH
N123N ~ Temco D-16A Twin Navion
N8608H ~ North American Navion A
We then continued west along the I90 to Spokane back in Washington state, first was Felts Field (code KSFF) located in Spokane Valley which was the cities original airport. It is a fairly busy GA airport with usual the Life Flight A119 heli and little of real interest other than an ex US Army U-21A King Air. At the west end is the Spokane Community College with several stored frames in various states of decline, but the most notable is ex USAF CT-39 Sabreliner.
N70786 ~ Beech A90-1 King Air ~ Dynamic Aviation Group ~ ex 67-18074
N6581E ~ North American CT-39A Sabreliner ~ ex 61-0679
We then continued west still along the I90 about 14 miles to the main Spokane International airport (code KGEG after it's former name Geiger Army Airfield) which replaced Felts Field in 1946. This is quite a busy airport with scheduled passenger and cargo flights, the largest being Southwest though Alaska have the most year round destinations, as follows:
AS => BOI, LAX, PDX, SAN, SFO & SEA
G4 => LAS & IWA with LAX commencing in May
AA => DFW & PHX with ORD resuming in June
DL => ATL, MSP, SLC & SEA
DL Connection => LAX, SLC & SEA
F9 => DEN commences in June
WN => DEN, LAS, OAK, PHX, SMF & SJC with seasonal to DAL & MDW commencing in June
SY => MSP seasonal commencing in June
UA => DEN with seasonal to ORD
UA Express => DEN & SFO with seasonal to ORD
There is a large DHL and Amazon facility as well as Fedex and UPS which generate the regional cargo carriers Ameriflight, Airpac and Western Air Express. Fedex Feeder carrier Empire Airlines based in the aforementioned Coeur D'Alene ID also have a maintenance facility here and I saw my first ever brand new Cessna 408 Skycourier. It is also home to aerial firefighters Aero Flite with CL2/415 family, Q400 and RJ85's who are sister company to Conair here in BC. They have a pair of ex Cityjet Avro RJ85 still in their paint in open storage as well as an ex Fedex 727-200 used by the airport and a small FBO with a few bizjets and GA. It is also just a few miles from Fairchild AFB and there are frequent KC135 tankers not very high on approach into there, maybe some C130's and other types on another day too.
N264FE ~ Boeing 727-233 (ADV (F) ~ Fedex Express ~ ex C-GAAQ
N403AC ~ Avro RJ-85 ~ Aero Flite ~ ex N536XJ & EI-RJX
N734FX ~ Cessna 408 Skycourier ~ Empire Airlines (Fedex Feeder)
63-7997 ~ Boeing KC-135R Stratotanker ~ US Air Force overhead into Fairchild AFB
These four stops took a lot of time, so was the last airport of the day as we headed south from Spokane down the RR195 to Colfax, Palouse and Pullman which is largely an agricultural area, but is absolutely stunning countryside in it's own right with miles of rolling farmland. There are a couple of small airfield south of Palouse we did not visit, Dals Flying Service at Schopeflin and nearby Hill, both essentially private farm airstrips. We stayed in the Cougar Land Motel in Pullman which was perfectly adequate for a nights rest and dinner at Rico's Smoke House, which was absolutely incredible.
As always, all photos are in my Flickr stream sorted alphabetically by airport and there is a lot of specific information and history of each airframe under each photograph. There is also an album for the non aviation photos too named USA road trip (along with a wedding) 2024.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/23870098@N04/albums/
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