Lantana Airport (LNA), named for the nearby town outside West Palm Beach, Fla., was intended as a reliever from its conception in 1941. In fact, the airport played a starring role in a government film, “Our Town Airport,” meant to spur other communities to get behind building their own municipal fields. Sixty-two years later the facility is flourishing in its role, largely due to the efforts of Owen Gassaway. The owner and operator of FBO Florida Airmotive, Gassaway is the fuel that has fired development of LNA to its current status. With up-to-date repaving, lights and an ILS to its 3,489-foot Runway 9/27, LNA is home to more than 400 aircraft (up to turboprops and turbine-powered helicopters) and 60 privately owned hangars–25 of which house independent aviation-related businesses.
The airport started as a municipal project, with fill from nearby swamps and sand dunes used to level the ground. Cost to build the airport just before the U.S. entered World War II was the princely sum of $199,000 (about $2.1 million today), and Lantana quickly became a humming hub of training for future military pilots under the ubiquitous civilian pilot training (CPT) program. During the war, Lantana was a base for Civil Air Patrol submarine spotters, including light aircraft such as the 1940 Stinson 10-A that Gassaway has restored, complete with a dummy 100-pound bomb slung under its belly. Zack Mosley, author of the comic strip “Smilin’ Jack,” was based at Lantana and reportedly drew many of his fictional characters from people he knew at the airport.
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