Lake Hood Floatplane Base Walking Tour

Due to its unique archi­tec­ture, this has been called the ​“Upside Down Build­ing.” Notice how the pipes on the out­side sup­port the invert­ed struc­ture. The float­plane take­off lane is right in front of the build­ing, and there’s pub­lic park­ing, mak­ing this a con­ve­nient place to watch planes take off and land.

The tow­er you see was decom­mis­sioned in 1977; since then, the Inter­na­tion­al Airport’s con­trol tow­er has over­seen Lake Hood as well — more than 800 flight oper­a­tions every day! You can hear some of the unique vocab­u­lary used by the con­trollers and the pilots when you lis­ten to the Lake Hood weath­er report over the phone: 907−245−1618. Pilots inter­na­tion­al­ly use a pho­net­ic alpha­bet to avoid con­fu­sion. A = alpha, B = bra­vo, etc. 

Along this road, you’ll find a num­ber of air­plane main­te­nance hang­ers. Hav­ing an air­plane here isn’t cheap. FAA reg­u­la­tions require pilots to get their planes inspect­ed annu­al­ly, which can cost any­where from $500 to $5,000 (or more)…and that’s before spend­ing an hour in the air. Of course, fuel adds to the cost as well. Most sin­gle-engine planes, like the ones you’ll find here, burn 8 – 20 gal­lons per hour. With fuel at $5 – $6 per gal­lon, the…  ...more

Make sure to look both ways before cross­ing the street. Wheel planes use this road to taxi over to the grav­el strip locat­ed on the north side of the map. This road is pri­mar­i­ly for access to hang­ers, wheel plane park­ing, and the rest of Lake Hood.

Locat­ed along­side Air­craft Dri­ve at the Grav­el Strip, the auto­mat­ed gates were installed to pre­vent cars from dri­ving out onto the run­way. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, they allow for a nice pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty of a plane taxi­ing to the run­way. How does a pilot open a gate? They dial their avi­a­tion radio into a spe­cif­ic fre­quen­cy and click the micro­phone five times.

Right in the shad­ow of the Inter­na­tion­al Air­port and the float­plane water­way is a strip for small wheel planes, which you’ll notice is grav­el, not paved. That’s because many bush planes have over­sized tires, and grav­el — because it’s a more for­giv­ing sur­face in high cross­winds — inflicts less dam­age on the tire.

Alas­ka is one of the world’s avi­a­tion hotspots, and the Airmen’s Asso­ci­a­tion rep­re­sents the pilot com­mu­ni­ty by pro­mot­ing and pre­serv­ing avi­a­tion in the state. Every May, they host a huge air­show where they raf­fle off a free air­plane. Tick­ets are $100 — they sell out quickly.

In order to cre­ate more space for float­plane park­ing on the lake, five tie-down chan­nels were dredged out in 1975. The first of the fin­gers is the Com­mer­cial Fin­ger, which is host to flight­see­ing and air taxi oper­a­tors. The oth­er four fin­gers are open to pilots for tie-down park­ing. Tie-downs are park­ing spots for the planes. Once parked, a pilot must tie the plane’s wings and tails to the ground or dock so if it gets windy, the plane won’t…  ...more

Near­ly 1,000 float­planes are parked all over the lake. Because Lake Hood sees about 200 dai­ly flight oper­a­tions, traf­fic could become rather busy. To pre­vent haz­ards on the water, the FAA has estab­lished traf­fic pat­terns so pilots can avoid inter­fer­ing with oth­er planes.

The float­plane base was orig­i­nal­ly two sep­a­rate lakes: Lake Hood, to the west, was the orig­i­nal base and Lake Spe­nard, to the east, was for bathing and swim­ming. In 1940, the canal was dredged out to expand the water­way and cre­ate one uni­fied body of water. The addi­tion of lights on the island in the mid­dle illu­mi­nat­ed the waterway’s night­time operations.

For a while in the 1990s, planes weren’t the only winged things tak­ing off from the lake. Swarms of water­fowl would inter­fere with flight oper­a­tions in and out of the air­port. A task force in charge of reduc­ing the bird pop­u­la­tion tried many expen­sive options, but final­ly found a sim­ple solu­tion. They put three farm pigs — named Curly, Lar­ry, and Moe — on the island that sep­a­rates the Take­off and Taxi Lanes, to destroy as many nests and devour as…  ...more

Don’t be fooled by the name of this park — you can’t actu­al­ly swim here. The beach was once a place for aquat­ic recre­ation, but now serves as a nice place to enjoy after­noon pic­nics and watch the air­planes take­off and land at Lake Hood, the world busiest float plane base. These float­planes can take you into remotes parts of Alas­ka to expe­ri­ence fish­ing, bear view­ing and sightseeing.