Wilkes-Barre/Scranton (AVP)

Google Earth imagery of AVP.

Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport

Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, Pennsylvania, United States

Airport #27 of 100 · First visited 16 January 2011

I flew into AVP for a work trip to Binghamton, New York, where flights directly into Binghamton were expensive enough to make the drive from northeastern Pennsylvania worthwhile.

The most unusual part of the airport was that (at least in 2011 when I visited) the taxiway didn’t extend all the way to the end of the runway—which meant we got to taxi down part of the runway itself, then make a U-turn to take off.

Aerial image of AVP runway 22 turnaround, showing taxi and takeoff path.

Our taxi route along the red arrows, before our takeoff along the yellow arrow.

I remember that the airport gift shop had quite a lot of The Office merchandise, which made sense as that’s probably Scranton’s biggest pop culture claim to fame. I was excited to go to Scranton for a different reason, though: to drive down the hill known for the banana truck incident in the Harry Chapin song 30,000 Pounds of Bananas.

Photo of no trucks sign on the side of the road leading to the hill from the song.

Trucks are now prohibited from that route. My rental car’s brakes handled the hill just fine!

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