Bell Training Academy (BTA) has opened the Floyd Carlson Airfield to give BTA pilots and customers quick and easy access to training fields.
The airfield, located on the corner of Trinity Boulevard and Greenbelt Road in Fort Worth, Texas, offers a raised landing platform and runways for training critical normal and emergency procedures, including full touchdown auto rotations.
The field is named after Floyd Carlson, chief helicopter test pilot of Bell. Carlson took his first flight in a Bell aircraft on June 2, 1942, in a Bell P-39D Airacobra. Since then, he performed the first flight of every Bell helicopter designed and built up to his retirement.
Going on to become the most experienced helicopter pilot in the world at the time, Carlson amassed 3,628 flight hours, of which 1313 hours were in experimental and production helicopters. His flight testing led to the CAA certification of the Bell Model 47, the world’s first commercial helicopter.
