Sperry Flight Systems built a desert strip in the 1950s. By 2020 it was handling 402,444 operations a year.
A Pirep featured story · KDVT Phoenix Deer Valley, Phoenix, AZ
In the 1950s the Sperry Corporation — best known then for the Sperry gyrocompass and the autopilot, both of which equipped most of the US Navy's WWII surface fleet — bought several thousand acres of empty Sonoran Desert north of Phoenix to build its aerospace and defense division. The Sperry Flight Systems complex needed a runway. The company graded one out of the desert and called it Sperry Field. It was a private airstrip serving a single corporate tenant; the surrounding land was creosote and cholla.
Phoenix grew. By 1971 the city had reached the airstrip. The city took over the runway, named it Deer Valley Airport, and opened it to the public as a Sky Harbor reliever. By 1985 there were so many flight schools at Deer Valley that the airport had to commission a second air traffic control tower on the north end of the field. The two towers operate simultaneously on different frequencies — north tower runs runway 7L/25R, south tower runs 7R/25L — and they hand traffic between each other across the parallel taxiways. Pilots transitioning to Deer Valley sometimes need three flights with an instructor before they're comfortable with the rhythm.
In 2020, with much of the country in pandemic stand-down, Phoenix Deer Valley logged 402,444 aircraft operations. That made it the fifth-busiest airport of any kind in the United States — ahead of LAX, ahead of Boston Logan, ahead of every commercial hub except a small handful of mega-airports. It was also the busiest general aviation airport in the world that year. And the year before. And the year after. Deer Valley has held the title since the early 2000s and shows no sign of giving it up.
The traffic mix is roughly 80% flight training, 15% corporate, 5% transient. ATP, AeroGuard, Sabena Aerospace, and Westwind School of Aeronautics all run cadet programs from the field. The Phoenix Bravo airspace rises overhead at 4,500 feet; Deer Valley's Class D goes to 4,499. Approach controllers at PHX coordinate Deer Valley traffic with Sky Harbor commercial flights on a continuous basis.
Land at KDVT and you'll be one of roughly 1,100 aircraft to do so that day. The runway is still on the same alignment Sperry graded out of the desert in 1956. The cholla is mostly gone now. The students are everywhere.