Tommy Kochon Airport guide

Tommy Kochon Airport serves Colville Lake, a settlement of about 110 people in the Sahtu Region of the Northwest Territories, roughly 50 km north of the Arctic Circle. The ICAO code is CYVL. No permanent road reaches the community, so the airport is its year-round link to the outside. A winter road to Fort Good Hope operates for about four to five months of the year.

The airport sits about 2.4 km from the community on the site that replaced the old airstrip within the settlement. The new terminal and longer runway opened in October 2012 and cost CA$12.8 million. The longer runway was built so larger aircraft could land. The single gravel runway, 17/35, measures 1,199 m (3,935 ft) by about 30 m (98 ft). The field elevation is 274 m (899 ft).

The terminal is unmanned. It has a small waiting room, washrooms and a land line phone. No fuel is sold at the airport. Scheduled flights are limited to routes to Fort Good Hope, Norman Wells and Yellowknife, and travellers should confirm schedules with the carrier before they travel. A separate water aerodrome on Colville Lake handles floatplanes in the open-water season.