Remains of Lufker Airport cleared for open space

As Julia Lamanna remembers it, there was nothing quite like flying an airplane at Lufker Airport in East Moriches.

The Shirley lawyer learned to fly almost a decade ago at Lufker and neighboring Spadaro Airport, piloting a four-seat Cessna 172 Skyhawk while navigating shifting breezes and avoiding 50-foot-high trees before landing on Lufker's legendarily short 2,300-foot grass runway.

"It was the best time of my adult life," Lamanna, 54, said.

Lufker was one of Long Island's last remaining grass-strip airfields when it closed nearly a decade ago. On Thursday, Brookhaven Town, which owns the shuttered airport, demolished its last remaining structures, including hangars and a house on the 30-acre property. The land will be preserved as open space.

Lamanna said she was "devastated" when Lufker closed, and she sobbed when she learned from a reporter that the hangars were no more.

But she was pleased that Lufker will remain forever wild — a silent homage, she said, to the generations of aviators who learned to fly there or made their livings running charter flights and offering skydiving lessons. 

“I cannot believe they’re not going to develop it. I am so happy about that," Lamanna said Thursday in a phone interview. "I think it’s a wonderful way to pay tribute to that wonderful space.”  

Landings of the rich and famous

Sequestered in a remote section of Brookhaven just off Montauk Highway, Lufker and Spadaro airports hearkened back to Long Island's early aviation era, when an airport could be any large, vacant patch of real estate.

Originally owned and operated by Teddy Kijowski, Lufker opened in the 1940s on an old cabbage and melon farm. The airport — which carried FAA identifier number 49N — was bought in 1984 by Lou Lufker, who operated it until he died in November 2018.

Lufker was used by companies that carried advertising banners over local beaches, and by flight and skydiving schools. 

Its grass landing strip also became a popular —  and discreet — destination for New York's rich and famous as they journeyed to the East End, Brookhaven Town officials said in a news release.

Actor Cliff Robertson and Pan American World Airways founder Juan Trippe both flew there, and the late John F. Kennedy Jr. piloted his own private plane to Lufker for trips to the Hamptons, town officials said. Gov. George Pataki landed there in a helicopter for official trips to Long Island, the town said.

Private pilots recalled Lufker as an idyllic place to take to the skies in vintage or contemporary aircraft while turning the clock back to an era when there were no control towers or electronic navigational aids.

“My flight instructor brought me there because it was nice and quiet," said Paul Farber, 66, a Roslyn Heights optician who took flight lessons at Lufker in 1988. Today he flies a World War II-era AT-6 advanced trainer aircraft.

"It was very exciting," Farber said Friday of his flight lessons. “Just beautiful and old school and a different era. ... You don’t need a radio to fly in there. It was like flying in your own private airport.”

Lamanna initially took flying lessons at Spadaro when she moved to the area from Brooklyn in 2010. Lou Lufker helped her find a place to live near the airport — close enough to see Lufker's runway from her balcony, she said.

“I still remember coming down [skydiving] and seeing my cat on the terrace," Lamanna said. "It was so crazy.”

'The end of an era'

Spadaro Airport, which had faced financial problems and noise complaints from neighbors, closed in 2016. Developers hope to turn it into a cemetery.

Lufker closed soon after Spadaro. It was put up for sale in 2018 for an initial asking price of nearly $8 million.

"[When I] found out it was closing, I was devastated," Lamanna said. “It was the end of an era.”

Local aviators said Long Island's last active grass airfield is the Bayport Aerodrome — an Islip Town-owned living aviation museum formerly known as Edwards Airport.

Brookhaven and Suffolk County jointly paid $5.28 million to buy Lufker, with the town paying 75% of the cost, or $3.96 million, Brookhaven said in a July 15 news release.

Thursday's demolition cost $75,000, the cost again shared by the town and county.

Lamanna still flies, now with GACE Flying Club, founded by Grumman Aerospace employees and operating out of Long Island MacArthur Airport in Ronkonkoma.

But she said she will never forget her days at Lufker. Flying there was a one-of-a-kind experience — “exhilarating, challenging, fun. It felt like going back in time.”

“The grass was always in great shape,” she said. “It was like landing on a cloud. It was really soft."