Palo Alto Airport (PAO)
Your guide to general aviation in the heart of Silicon Valley
Palo Alto Airport, listed under the airport codes PAO and KPAO, is a general aviation field on the western shore of San Francisco Bay, about three miles from downtown Palo Alto and Stanford University. Operated by the City of Palo Alto, it serves private pilots, flight schools, and business aviation rather than scheduled airline traffic - there are no commercial flights here, no security lines, and no gate numbers. What you will find is a small, towered field with a single runway, two long-running flying clubs, and a handful of independent maintenance and avionics shops, all set in one of the busiest stretches of airspace in Northern California. This page gives a general orientation to the airport; for ground transportation, maintenance, or aircraft rental specifics, the sections below link to dedicated pages with more detail.
Airport Facts at a Glance
Palo Alto Airport sits at an elevation of 7 feet above sea level and covers about 102 acres on the southern end of San Francisco Bay. It has a single asphalt runway, 13/31, measuring 2,443 by 70 feet, suited to light single and twin-engine aircraft and light turboprops rather than larger business jets.
The control tower operates from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. local time; outside those hours the field reverts to non-towered operations. The airport is owned and operated by the City of Palo Alto, and its location places it under San Francisco International's Class B airspace, with Class C airspace from both Oakland and San Jose International close by.
A General Aviation Field in the Middle of Silicon Valley
What makes PAO distinctive is less the airport itself and more what surrounds it. Stanford University and downtown Palo Alto are both about three miles away, and the airport sits within a fifteen to twenty minute drive of Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and the rest of the Silicon Valley tech corridor. That proximity is why the field sees a steady stream of business aviation traffic alongside its core community of local pilots, flight students, and flying club members - it's a working general aviation airport that happens to sit in the middle of one of the most expensive and well-connected pieces of real estate in the country.
There are no scheduled passenger flights at PAO. Anyone arriving by air here is flying privately, training, or operating for business - which also shapes the kind of ground services available, covered in more detail on the Transfers and FBO pages below.
Who Flies Out of PAO
The field is home to two of the Bay Area's longest-running flying clubs: the Stanford Flying Club, founded in 1930, and West Valley Flying Club, established in 1973. Both run membership-based fleets used for everything from weekend recreational flying to full flight training programs, and together they make up a large share of the based aircraft and daily traffic at the field.
Alongside the clubs, several independent businesses provide maintenance and avionics support, including Advantage Aviation, Aero Works (WVAS Inc.), Rossi Aircraft, and Peninsula Avionics. If you're new to the field, whether you're renting, maintaining an aircraft, or just visiting, the dedicated pages linked below go into the specifics of each.
Visiting PAO for the First Time
If you're flying in or arranging ground transportation for the first time, a few things are worth knowing upfront. The terminal building is compact and sits on the southeast side of the field - there's no commercial-style arrivals hall, so coordinating pickups in advance is the norm rather than the exception.
The surrounding airspace is genuinely busy, sitting under San Francisco's Class B shelf with Class C airspace from San Jose and Oakland nearby, so pilots unfamiliar with the area should review current charts before arrival. And because PAO is a general aviation field rather than a commercial hub, plan on arranging transportation, maintenance, or rental needs ahead of time rather than expecting walk-up service once you land.