Cornelia Fort Airpark

History

The airport was established in 1944 by the Colemill Flying Service and was named for World War II aviator Cornelia Fort.

On March 5, 1963, Patsy Cline was flying to the airport from Fairfax Airport in Kansas City, Kansas with a stopover at Dyersburg when her Piper Comanche crashed 90 miles from the airport near Camden, Tennessee.

In the early 1950s Ernest W. Colbert bought out his partner to become sole owner and continued in that capacity (operating it as Colemill Enterprises) until selling it in 2011. Colbert had been seeking a buyer after defaulting on loans of $1 million in 2005 and the second for $1.4 million in 2010 (after it was inundated in the 2010 Tennessee floods.

With the 2011 purchase, the Shelby Park/Shelby Bottoms/Cornelia Fort area has more than 1,300 acres—the fourth largest public greenspace in Nashville (trailing Beaman, Bells Bend and Warner). After the sale, the property would no longer be serving small private planes.

Musician Earl Scruggs was injured in a night landing of his single-engine plane at the airpark. He was flying solo in his 1974 Cessna Skyhawk II returning from a musical performance in Murray, Kentucky around midnight on September 29, 1975. He encountered fog and overshot the runway. The plane flipped over, but the ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter) device in the airplane did not trigger. Scruggs remained unattended with a broken ankle , nose, and other injuries for about five hours. Fearing a possible fire, Scruggs was able to crawl about 150 feet from the plane despite his injuries. His family was driving back from the concert in Kentucky and was unaware of the accident, but a niece became worried, called police about 4 AM and went to the airpark where they heard his cry for help near the wreckage. He healed uneventfully from the accident.

Russell W. Brothers, Jr., a Nashville businessman, was familiar with Cornelia Fort Airpark and at one time lived there. At age 75, Brothers was flying a private plane solo at night from Miami, Florida to Dickson, Tennessee on April 20, 2012. After trouble with the landing grear, he made crash-landing in his 1961 vintage twin-engine Beechcraft airplane at the Cornelia Fort Airpark which was closed at the time. Without landing gear, he made a belly landing on a grassy area. The landing was not violent enough to trigger an alert signal by the airplane's automatic crash locator. Brothers was not injured and left the scene without notifying authorities. His wife picked him up, and he left the plane there as a mystery. A maintenance worker later saw it, but did not alert authorities until the following morning. The police traced the plane to Brothers and searched his home, where they found 16 firearms. Since he had a prior conviction as a felon 24 years previously, it was unlawful for Brothers to possess firearms. Subsequently, he was convicted of unlawful possession of firearms and obstruction of justice. Brothers pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to the weapons charge and also to obstruction of a federal investigation, receiving a 15-month jail sentence.

Facilities and aircraft

Cornelia Fort Airpark covered an area of 300 acres (121 ha) at an elevation of 418 feet (127 m) above mean sea level. It had one runway designated 4/22 with an asphalt surface measuring 3,500 by 50 feet (1,067 x 15 m). For the 12-month period ending March 6, 2009, the airport had 30,110 aircraft operations, an average of 82 per day: 95% general aviation and 5% air taxi. At that time there were 27 aircraft based at this airport: 74% single-engine and 26% multi-engine.