Captiol Hill committe hearing RE: FAA

Richard

Richard

Final Approach
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Ack...city life
In providing testimony before committee hearings on FAA Programs & Policies, Lee Moak, President ALPA, presents a power point display which features:

For the USA ATC

  • 29 million square miles
  • 48 million flights annually
  • 28,000 employees
  • 19,000 airports
  • 600 ATC facilities
For NAVCAN

  • 7 million squares miles
  • 12 million flights annually
  • 4,640 employees
  • 1,404 airports
  • 130 ATC facilities
An online search reveals the entire Earth has 196,950,000 sq mi. Moak's figure for USA comprises almost 15%. Naturally oceanic airspace is included. But the total surface area of the USA is only 13% of the 29 million that Moak presents.

How did Moak figure 19,000 airports under USA ATC? I know that the Go Fly America project could come up with only a fraction of that number. The GFA project was constrained to USA domestic airports and I do not remember if HI and AK were included. Still, is a jump to get from circa 6,000 to 19,000 airports.
 
I just pulled the 56 day data file from NFDC (http://nfdc.faa.gov), and there are indeed 19,436 airport records in the FAA database.

That includes private airports on the charts, heliports, seaports, all those things.
 
Now that you mention it, I remember GFA was limited to runways open to the public. Still, that's a lot of heliports. I imagine seaports number about 1,000 or so.

Anyone in the know want to address how the USA land area is such a small fraction of the total area mentioned by Moak? I only surmise that his number reflects huge areas of the oceans covered by USA ATC.
 
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The Oakland Oceanic FIR covers almost 1/3 of the Pacific. That's a lot of surface area. FAA branches also control the Gulf of Mexico and half the North Atlantic.
 
OK, more number crunching.

So...total facilities is 19,436

Of those, 13,231 are airports, 13 balloon facilities, 35 gliderports, 5,549 heliports, 487 seaplane bases, and 121 ultralight facilities.

Of the airports, 8,245 are private use, 4,986 are public use.

Of the heliports, 5,483 are private use, 66 are public use.
 
JeffDG said:
OK, more number crunching.

So...total facilities is 19,436

Of those, 13,231 are airports, 13 balloon facilities, 35 gliderports, 5,549 heliports, 487 seaplane bases, and 121 ultralight facilities.

Of the airports, 8,245 are private use, 4,986 are public use.

Of the heliports, 5,483 are private use, 66 are public use.
Click to expand...

Those airports without ATC facilities or accepting federal funds shouldn't figure. Balloon and glider ports function without direct administration from the FAA. Those operations may fall under the jurisdiction of the FAA but they operate sans ATC. Too, those private or restricted airfields have zero interaction with ATC once they have been established. I flew from KTOA to a private strip in eastern CA without talking to anyone but TOA ground and tower and it was completely legal. Apparently such a flight would make Moak's list because it was required I talk to GND and TWR at TOA.

Even in the air, that may still apply. Other than the towers at the respective departure and landing airports a pilot could fly a good portion of the Los Angeles basin without talking to anyone.

I get that Moak is speaking of the FAA having jurisdiction but he didn't address, at least directly, the lack of operational control of those facilities that were included in his list.
 
Richard,

I officially hate you...you've gone and nerd-sniped me*.

I started looking at the data and some cool stuff popped up. First, this is the largest airport in the US by area:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/3...8262359,4344m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x0

According to the FAA data, that grass strip is a 55,000 ac airport! #2 on the list is KDEN at 33,531 ac. Overall, about 1/2 the facilities have areas of greater than zero associated with them, and add up to 4x the size of Rhode Island.

* For those unfamiliar with the term nerd-sniped:
nerd_sniping.png
 
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