Biography

Fairfax Municipal Airport was named by the time of the Great Flood of 1951 and in 1953 the F-84F Thunderflash aircraft assembly line was in the same 53-acre (21 ha) GM Assembly Plant. In 1954 a Zantop DC-3A crashed on approach to Fairfax, killing 3. Fairfax was the 1955 landing site of a TWA DC-3 trainer that "had just taken off from Fairfax" before colliding with and destroying a Cessna of Baker's Flying Service. The 1963 fatal journey for Patsy Cline's Piper Comanche began at Fairfax, and the airport was added to the GNIS on October 13, 1978. Fairfax's longest runway (17/35) was 7,301 ft (2,225 m) long when the airport's last flight departed on March 31, 1985, and on April 1, 1985, the land was added to the Fairfax District industrial area. The General Motors Fairfax Assembly Plant was completed in 1985 on the runways, and auto production at the WWII bomber plant building ceased in May 1987 (GM had purchased it in 1960 and it was razed in 1989).

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