Kansas City Downtown (KMKC)

Charles B. Wheeler Kansas City Downtown is the metro's original airport, on a peninsula inside a Missouri River bend directly across from the downtown skyline. Two runways cross mid-field: a sixty-eight-hundred-foot primary up the river bottoms and a five-thousand-foot crosswind, every threshold displaced for downtown obstacle clearance. There is no scheduled airline service; this is the bizjet front door of Kansas City.

You work Downtown Tower, a satellite seat under the Kansas City TRACON, and your departures ship to Kansas City Departure rather than straight to Center. The traffic is the busiest of the small towers: NetJets and Flexjet arrivals off the metro's real satellite STARs, a constant general-aviation trade, and a share of pattern work between the corporate movements. South flow lands and departs the 19 with the 22 as crosswind overflow; north flow mirrors it on the 1 and 4.

This is the Steady tier at its liveliest: real bizjet banks on crossing runways, with the river wrapped around your final. The marquee seat of the Kansas City trio.

Runway layout