Oshawa Executive Airport & Private Aviation · Oshawa
Oshawa Executive Airport and Private Aviation Transfers
Private aviation reverses every assumption a commercial airport trip is built on. There is no three-hour cushion, no departure board, and the aircraft moves when the passengers do rather than the other way round.
Most people who live in Oshawa know there is an airport in the north end and have never thought about it again. It is worth thinking about.
Oshawa Executive Airport sits off Stevenson Road North near Taunton, and the City of Oshawa, which owns it, describes it as Ontario's largest general aviation and corporate-only airport. There are no scheduled passenger flights and there is no plan for any. What it has instead is corporate and charter aircraft, flight training, air ambulance work, freight, aerial police operations, aircraft maintenance and over 350,000 square feet of hangar space spread across a North Field and a South Field. It is managed for the City by Total Aviation & Airport Solutions.
It is a working field, not a curiosity. And with general aviation capacity elsewhere in the GTA having thinned out in recent years, the traffic here has not got quieter.
Why this is different from a Pearson run
Everything that makes a commercial airport transfer predictable is absent.
- No check-in cushion. Passengers on a private departure frequently arrive fifteen or twenty minutes before the aircraft moves. The three-hour rule does not exist. Aim a commercial door time at a private departure and your passenger sits in a lounge for two hours wondering why they bothered flying privately.
- The schedule moves and nothing announces it. There is no board and no app telling the public that the flight slipped ninety minutes. The information comes from the operator or the handler, which means the car has to be reachable and the driver has to be somewhere useful rather than parked forty kilometres away.
- The pickup point is not a curb. It is a specific hangar, a specific door, a specific gate. That gets confirmed before the day with whoever is handling the aircraft, along with the name of the person to call if the gate is shut.
- Diversions are normal. Weather that closes one small field does not close the next one. An aircraft bound for Oshawa can end up at another Ontario field or at Pearson, and the ground plan has to survive that without anyone stranded.
The hours the field actually works
The airport is open around the clock, but the City publishes a voluntary restriction between 10:30pm and 6:30am that limits movements in those hours to police, medical and industrial flights and Oshawa-based aircraft coming home. In practice that pushes most corporate departures and arrivals into the working day and the shoulders of it, which is useful to know when you are planning a car around an aircraft.
Runway direction is the other local quirk. In light winds aircraft use Runway 30, departing out over Taunton Road; in stronger winds they take whichever runway faces the wind. It changes nothing about your trip and it explains why the field sounds busy from one side of the city and silent from the other.
The work that actually comes up
Passengers arriving at CYOO. Someone flies in on a corporate aircraft for a meeting in Whitby, a plant in Ajax, a site in Clarington or an office downtown. They land at an airport with no taxi rank and no train, twelve kilometres north of the 401. A booked car is not a luxury there; it is the only sensible plan.
Passengers departing from CYOO. The reverse, and the easier one, because the door time comes off the aircraft's schedule. From most of Durham the field is fifteen to thirty minutes away, which makes late changes recoverable in a way a Pearson departure never is.
Crew. Flight crew who have brought an aircraft in and need a hotel in Oshawa, Whitby or downtown Toronto, and the return the next morning at whatever hour the flight plan says. Crew moves are repeat work and they run on precision rather than polish.
Runs to the general aviation side at Pearson. Plenty of Durham passengers fly privately out of Pearson rather than Oshawa, which means a drive to a fixed-base operator on the general aviation side of the field — Signature and the other handlers there — rather than to Terminal 1 or 3. Different entrance, different approach, different instructions. It gets confirmed with the handler before the day.
Mixed trips. The common one: land at Oshawa in the morning, two site visits across Durham, lunch, and wheels up mid-afternoon. That is a car held for the day rather than three separate bookings, and it is quoted as such.
What is on the field if you have never been
The South Field still has the original buildings from the 1940s. The airport opened in June 1941 as No. 20 Elementary Flying Training School under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, closed at the end of 1944, and came under the town's control in 1947. The Ontario Regiment R.C.A.C. Regimental Museum operates out of those South Field buildings and runs its tank days, which is why some Saturdays there is armour moving around an airfield in north Oshawa. Airmen's Park nearby has a war-surplus Sabre on display. Flight training operates out of the field as well.
None of that changes your booking. It does explain why the entrance you want is not always the entrance the map suggests, and why the hangar number matters more than the street address.
Getting to the field from the rest of Durham
From south Oshawa it is fifteen minutes up Stevenson or Thornton. From Whitby, across Taunton or up the 412 and back along the top of the city. From Pickering or Ajax it is the 401 east then north, or the 407 across the top and down — the second is usually better at any hour that the 401 is carrying commuters. From Bowmanville or Courtice, Highway 418 up to the 407 and west is the clean run.
The fleet on all of it is the same three Audi SUVs: a 2024 blue Q7, a 2023 black Q7 and a 2027 black Q9, four to five passengers with luggage. For a party larger than that it is more than one car, and you will be told so before you book rather than after.
Frequently asked questions
Can you pick up at the hangar rather than a terminal?
That is how these trips work. Oshawa Executive has no scheduled passenger terminal, so the pickup is a specific hangar or handler door, confirmed in advance with whoever is looking after the aircraft, along with a contact if the gate is closed. The same applies at the general aviation side of Pearson, where the approach is nothing like the Terminal 1 or Terminal 3 one.
Our departure time keeps moving. How do you handle that?
By expecting it. Private schedules slide and there is no departure board to tell anyone. The arrangement is a working contact with the operator or handler and a driver positioned sensibly rather than parked in another town. A ninety-minute slip on a corporate departure is an ordinary event here, not a crisis.
Do you do crew transfers as well as passengers?
Yes. Crew in from the field to a hotel in Oshawa, Whitby or downtown Toronto, and back out at whatever hour the next flight plan needs. Crew work runs on being exactly on time at an awkward hour, which suits a pre-booked car far better than an app. Three Audi SUVs, four to five people per car, quoted before the job.
Serving Oshawa and surrounding areas. Contact us for a no-obligation quote specific to your property.