Kaanapali Airport
airport in Hawaii, United States of America
Kaanapali Airport was a small regional airport located on the northwest end of Maui, near the city of Lahaina and north of Kaanapali Beach in Honokōwai. The airport serviced West Maui between 1965 and its closure in 1986.
History
The exact date of the airport's construction is unknown, but was presumably built to transport workers to develop Kaanapali into a resort by Amfac, Inc. around 1961.
It was not shown on the 1961 USGS topographic map.
Commercial airline service
Royal Hawaiian Air Service was the only commuter airline authorized to use the airport, although Federal Express also used it. According to one private pilot, the airport "had no markings to indicate that it was restricted or private use only, (but when) my wife and I landed a rented Piper Cherokee on this airstrip in August 1970 while on our honeymoon... we were not well received and were politely but firmly asked to leave." The airport was one of the most challenging locations to fly because of its short 2,700-foot (820 m) runway, which began just beyond Kaanapali Beach and cut a narrow swath through high green sugarcane fields. Because the airport was near the edge of a wind shadow, where the West Maui Mountains shielded the airport from the trade winds, the winds at the airport could range from calm to breezy depending on the wind direction.
Around 1983, Royal Hawaiian acquired two STOL capable de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter turboprop aircraft, which flew nearly exclusively on the Honolulu to Kaanapali route.
The public source identifies “Kaanapali Airport” as airport in Hawaii, United States of America. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Kaanapali, Airport and airport.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q10853687. Authority coordinates are 20.943, -156.690. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965, 1986, 1961 and 1970.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kaanapali Airport” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.