Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport (TNT)

Also known as the "Everglades Jetport", this huge, nearly abandoned modern airport is a true "white elephant". It was intended to provide service for the Miami area by the never-built US supersonic transport, and was thus situated far outside of the populated area, in the Everglades, to mitigate the noise impact of SST operations. The Jetport was planned to have six runways, a high speed rail system linking it to Miami, and a six lane expressway connecting it to Miami as well. Only a single concrete runway (9/27) was built - a whopping 10,500' in length. The date of construction of the Dade-Collier Airport has not been determined.

The earliest depiction which has been located of the field was on the January 1970 Miami Sectional Chart (courtesy of Chris Kennedy). It depicted Dade Collier as a private airfield having a single 10,500' paved runway & a control tower. Before the Dade Collier airfield was ever was used for airline service, the US SST was canceled, eliminating its reason for being. Furthermore, environmentalists convinced the government that the operation of a major airport would bring unacceptable harm to the Everglades.

Therefore, even though one runway had already been built, the decision was made to cancel the new airport. Yet it was also decided that removing the already-built runway would cause further environmental harm, so it was allowed to remain as it was built, strangely all alone.

It eventually opened for very limited use civil flight training by heavy airliners. Dade-Collier was a natural for this kind of operation, as it did not have any other kind of traffic. The 2003 Airport Facility Directory included the remark, "Airport closed to public except by arrangement with Dade County Aviation Department Miami."

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