Navy Announces Field Carrier Landing Practice Window, OLF Coupeville Operations This Week

The U.S. Navy has released Field Carrier Landing Practice windows for Naval Air Station Whidbey Island and scheduled carrier‑style landing practice at Outlying Landing Field Coupeville, with landing practice slated late Monday afternoon to evening and again late Tuesday afternoon to evening for the week covering Jan. 26, 2026; no further OLF Coupeville operations were listed for that week and Ault Field had no landing practice scheduled. The base published a station comment line at 360‑257‑6665 and listed naswi_noise_comments@us.navy.mil for noise comments, with the public affairs office at 360‑257‑2286 for other questions.

Separate weekly schedule postings show additional windows later in the season; calendar rows circulated for late February into early March list specific OLF Coupeville blocks such as Monday March 2 labeled “Early Afternoon, then Evening,” Tuesday March 3 through Thursday March 5 labeled “Early Afternoon, then Evening to Night,” and Friday March 6 listed as “Late Morning to Early Afternoon,” while many late‑February dates are marked “None.” The postings also repeat that “Windows for OLF Coupeville and Ault Field will continue to be released weekly for community planning purposes.” The FCLP tempo, the postings state, “is driven by operational training requirements and may fluctuate due to weather and maintenance.”

OLF Coupeville has a long training history: Naval Air Station Whidbey Island opened in 1942 and the outlying field went into use the following year, with the Navy designating Coupeville in 1967 as an ideal site for pilots to practice carrier approaches. Field Carrier Landing Practice is described in base background materials as a touch‑and‑go training regimen that must “simulate what pilots would encounter at sea when landing on an aircraft carrier,” and historical jet types recorded at OLF include the A‑3 Skywarrior, A‑6 Intruder and EA‑6B Prowler.

Local community group Citizens of Ebey’s Reserve notes geographic and traffic context around OLFC: the outlying field sits about 10 nautical miles south of NAS Whidbey Island and Ault Field, the field elevation is cited at 199 feet mean sea level, and the town of Coupeville sits roughly 2 miles northwest with about 1,800 residences. COER also cites Washington State Department of Transportation 2013 counts showing an average weekday total of 8,483 vehicles on the main north‑south highway that runs within a few hundred yards of the field’s north end.

COER has raised technical and environmental concerns about FCLP at OLFC, saying in formal statements that “The Environmental Assessments that were conducted used unrealistic data making the finding of no significant impact probably fallacious and seemingly contrived,” and arguing that the field is “far from an ideal training location” because of prevailing winds, density altitude and runway length; those are COER assertions that the Navy has been asked to address. An earlier Navy staff explanation quoted by COER in a January 9, 2014 email from Mike Welding says the flight patterns “are intended to simulate as closely as possible, the approach and landing on an aircraft carrier” and notes carriers generate wind over the deck by steaming up to about 30 knots, which affects approach direction at OLF.

The Navy’s published weekly windows and the posted contact points remain the operational mechanism for notifying Island County about FCLP; with schedules subject to change for operational needs, weather and maintenance, the public affairs office at NAS Whidbey, 360‑257‑2286, can confirm current windows.