Coast Guard aviation was still small when Elizabeth City opened: at the end of 1938 the service had 50 aircraft, eight air stations and one air detachment. The Neutrality Patrol of 1939 and the coming war changed that, and Elizabeth City was established in 1940, with San Francisco following in 1941. It was commissioned on 15 August 1940 with four officers, 52 enlisted men and ten aircraft of three types: Hall PH-2 flying boats for rescue at sea, Fairchild J2K landplanes and Grumman J2F Duck amphibians.

Elizabeth City was not the Coast Guard’s first try in North Carolina. In 1920 the service had taken over the former Navy air station at Morehead City and flown it with five borrowed aircraft, but the station closed after a year for lack of money; permanent flying only began in 1925 at Ten Pound Island in Massachusetts.

On 1 November 1941 the whole Coast Guard passed to the Navy, and for the rest of the war the station flew under Navy control. Wikipedia describes its work as search and rescue, anti-submarine warfare and training; the Coast Guard Aviation Association records that Coast Guard aircraft as a whole made 61 bombing attacks on submarines. Neither source credits Elizabeth City aircraft with a sinking.

The station’s reach is the result of consolidation. In 1966 it absorbed the Coast Guard air stations at Kindley Air Force Base in Bermuda and at Argentia in Newfoundland. Argentia had been the base for the International Ice Patrol’s flights from 1946 to 1966: the patrol, created in 1914 after the loss of the Titanic, flew its first aircraft reconnaissance with a PBY-5A on 6 February 1946 and has relied on aircraft alone since 1949, moving from PB-1G Flying Fortresses to R5Ds and, from 1962, Hercules. Wikipedia lists the Ice Patrol among Elizabeth City’s missions today, alongside search and rescue, maritime law enforcement, aids to navigation support and environmental protection.

Wikipedia gives the present fleet as five HC-130J Hercules and four MH-60T Jayhawks. That figure should be read with care: the Coast Guard acquisition directorate’s HC-130J page, updated in 2026, names Sacramento, Kodiak and Barbers Point as the stations that fly the type and does not mention Elizabeth City. The FAA data, effective 3 September 2026, show one usable runway, 10/28 at 7,219 feet, with the crosswind runway 1/19 closed indefinitely.

Elizabeth City is an unusual airport. FAA data, effective 3 September 2026, call it Elizabeth City Coast Guard Air Station/Regional Airport and describe it as a shared-use field on which the Coast Guard owns and operates all the runways and the majority of the taxiways. The reference point lies at 36.26° N, 76.17° W, and the field sits just 10.6 feet (3.2 m) above sea level.

The main runway, 10/28, is 7,219 feet (2,200 m) of concrete and 150 feet wide; the crosswind runway, 1/19, at 4,518 feet, is listed as closed indefinitely. The Coast Guard sets the rules for military visitors: Defense Department turbojets must make full-stop landings only, practice approaches and visual touch-and-goes are prohibited, and aircraft bound for the Coast Guard ramp must call Elizabeth City Air on 345.0 MHz ten minutes before landing.

The rescue most associated with Elizabeth City in recent years came on 29 October 2012. The Bounty, a replica sailing ship built in 1960, was caught by Hurricane Sandy about 90 miles south-east of the Outer Banks near the Hatteras Canyon. A Coast Guard HC-130 found her around midnight; at dawn MH-60 Jayhawks from Elizabeth City arrived and hoisted 14 people from life rafts.

Two people did not survive. Claudene Christian was recovered but pronounced dead in hospital, and the captain, Robin Walbridge, was never found; the search, covering some 12,000 square nautical miles, was suspended on 1 November 2012. The investigation that followed called his decision to sail into the hurricane’s path reckless and found that the order to abandon ship came much too late.