Municipal airports

Frogs97

Frogs97

Pre-takeoff checklist
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Fort Worth, TX
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Frogs97
I was driving through town earlier today and realized that the city of Fort Worth owns and manages 3 airports, none of which handle scheduled passenger service (which goes through DFW). How does that compare to other areas? I know Dallas only has two, one of them being DAL. Houston has three, but IAH and HOU both do scheduled passenger service.

I don't know if it's unusual, or if it means anything one way or another. It just struck me as odd that a city of 800k maintains three airports that are very much dedicated to GA (you could argue that FWA is more dedicated to cargo I suppose).
 
GA doesn't necessarily mean the Sunday 172 renter and flight instructor. It also includes business jets and charters. A major factor for municipal airports is also medical flights. There are a number of other reasons and economic benefits for an airport to exist without airline service.
 
Where I live we have a municipal airport that the city owns and it's solely used for GA operations, no scheduled passenger service. It's a satelite airport to our main Class C airport, which has scheduled passenger service as well as GA operations.
 
The municipal airport of the City of The Dalles, Oregon, is not located within the city. In fact, it's not even in the same state.

The airport is in the A/FD under "Oregon", but the entry contains a note, "Arpt physically located in state of Washington."
 
Pilawt said:
The municipal airport of the City of The Dalles, Oregon, is not located within the city. In fact, it's not even in the same state.

The airport is in the A/FD under "Oregon", but the entry contains a note, "Arpt physically located in state of Washington."
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Well, since we're on that subject there is always the famous Greater Cincinnati International airport (CVG) which happens to be in Northern Kentucky.
 
Duval County, which contains Jacksonville, Fl and some beach communities has 1 scheduled service (JAX), three relievers (CRG, HEG, VQQ), three military (NIP, NRB, NEN) and two private landing areas (Deep Forest [land] and Gale [water].
 
ahkahn said:
Well, since we're on that subject there is always the famous Greater Cincinnati International airport (CVG) which happens to be in Northern Kentucky.
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Good catch, but CVG (Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport) and its owner (Kenton County) are both in Kentucky. Interestingly, though, the airport is not in Kenton County.

At DLS, the municipality owner is across the state line from the airport.

The Dalles, Oregon, is on a narrow strip of land on the curving south bank of the Columbia River, between the river and high escarpments to the south. The only flat land available for an airport was on the north (Washington) side of the river.

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Pilawt said:
Good catch, but CVG (Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport) and its owner (Kenton County) are both in Kentucky. Interestingly, though, the airport is not in Kenton County.
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And not only that, but the airport is not in the town of Covington, KY, it's namesake.
 
Local County Dept of Aviation has 5 airports.
One Class B
Two Class D
Two Class G
All serve corporate and smaller GA aircraft.
 
Well, DC has ZERO airports with runways (does have a couple of heliports). The surrounding area has three airports with airline service and a bunch of GA fields some owned by local municipalites. Several are owned by the cities (Manassas, Leesburg) or the County (Gaithersburg) or a regional authority (College Park), and a few are private-owned, public use (Freeway, Hyde, Potomac).

A lot of the GA fields out there are historical (built ages ago). Some are operated and improved to provide as pointed out EMS and other emergency services, charter, business, etc. A lot of times it is developed in the "if you build it they will come" mentality. In order to attract business to the county, you need to have an airport capable of handling bizjets and some decent instrument approaches. Some local fields that's all they're interested in to the point of ignoring everybody else. My home field (Culpeper) has a different philosophy. They find the flight school and all the local based aircraft as keeping the aircraft alive for the up and coming business users. We now have two maintenance operations, a LOC and two LPV down to 200' approaches, and their building more hangars. Fuel is relatively cheap for the area and the hangar rent is decent (half what the next airports up the road are charging) and available.

Of course, the primary reason I'm there is that the maintenance shop is run by another Navion owner (hence we've got like 5-6 Navions on the field). We also have the CAF, CAP, and just about every kind of aircraft imaginable out buzzing around on a nice weekend afternoon.
 
ahkahn said:
And not only that, but the airport is not in the town of Covington, KY, it's namesake.
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Oh, I don't know, as long as that stupid underground tunnel is that takes you to concourse C, it might well go to Covington and back! :)
 
Fullerton (KFUL) is the only GA-only airport left in Orange County, CA, and has always been run by the city. Tenants include CalFire, CHP, Anaheim PD and a med flight operator, which help keep up community support, but ironic probably contribute far more to the noise signature of the airport than the flivvers (or, I'm just more sensitive to helicopter noise).

New Bedford, MA (EWB ), where I learned to fly, is owned/run by the city. It has a bit of local scheduled operations (mostly seasonal in the summer), but is primarily GA.
 
I can't count the number of times relatives have been flown out from one of the local municipal airports to Wichita or some other regional hospital... In my book, these small airports are kinda cheap....
 
Norwood Ma. KOWD is a municipal airport,with charter service,and flight training. No commercial service. Just outside of Boostons class B.
 
Watsonville Municipal (KWVI, Watsonville, CA) is our local muni field. The city of Watsonville operates the fuel pumps, trucks and transient parking. There are three flight schools, each of which also do maintenance, one shop that only does maintenance, a car rental agency and a restaurant in the terminal.

Salinas KSNS is 19 miles away, also operated by a city. KSNS has the usual deal of FBOs running the fuel concessions.

Marina (KOAR) is city-run, with city-owned fuel pumps and parking.
 
Lincoln, CA (LHM) is another municipal field.

There are probably hundreds of municipally owned/operated airports.
 
Essex County Airport in North NJ is owned and operated by the Essex County Improvement Authority which is basically a government branch of Essex County. Most of the air traffic at that airport is light GA with the occasional corporate jet traffic and some helicopter traffic.

Morristown Municipal Airport, also in North NJ, is owned by the town of Morristown but operated by a private company called D.M. Airports Limited. There you will see more corporate jet traffic with several light GA traffic. From the people I know who work at MMU, that airport is extremely valuable since several Fortune 500 companies have their headquarters in North Jersey near the airport with their flight department based at the airport.
 
Indy Airport Authority owns and operates 6 airports

Port Authority of NY & NJ owns 5 airports
 
Gucci Pilot said:
Port Authority of NY & NJ owns 5 airports
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Actually 6 airports now. The Port Authority operates some parts of the management functions at Atlantic City International Airport, while South Jersey Transportation Authority is the main airport operator. So in a way, PANYNJ and SJTA both operate KACY.
 
I fly out of Potomac (mentioned earlier by FlyingRon), which is privately owned.

I'm visiting family in MS this weekend and took a Warrior out of KTVR yesterday. That airport was built pretty much solely for a Gulfstream the Army Corp of Engineers flies out of it. Now it's become kind of a hotbed for vintage stuff though. The A&P there is a T-6 guy so all the guys who have these T-6's down south either hanger there or come in for service. There's a Yak-3, P-51, Waco, old twin Beech, etc. on the field as well.

5000 foot runway in the middle of the nowhere with all that unique traffic on the field. You never know what some of these municipals are being used for.
 
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I currently fly out of 3AU (Augusta Municipal) just outside of Wichita. It is 100% GA and although not flashy a great little airport. The other non-commercial airport in town is of course Jabara (KAAO). Jabara receives pretty much all of the charter and business jet traffic for the east side of ICT. The 3AU airport manager has done a great job of fixing up the airport, adding a weather station, and other stuff to entice bigger planes with little success.

I am moving back to Iowa and hoping to get involved with an airport that has been privately owned public use airport. A new investor has teamed up with the city to buy it out in the hopes of adding a new runway (current runway is only 23 feet wide) and other things to compete with the metro area's other class C airport. It is pretty cool to see a couple airports growing and trying to compete when many are closing.
 
Wichita Falls population 100k, has two municipal airports. The big one KSPS is owned and maintained mostly by the USAF but the city does own and maintain the civilian ramp and just built a new 14 million dollar terminal. Kickapoo airport KCWC is purely GA and makes enough revenue to pay for itself.
 
ahkahn said:
Well, since we're on that subject there is always the famous Greater Cincinnati International airport (CVG) which happens to be in Northern Kentucky.
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I didn't know that the first time I drew the short straw and had to do a field engineering business trip to Cincinatti.

Kinda weird driving across the bridge and seeing a "Welcome to Ohio" sign -- when you thought that's where you just flew to, and you're tired and groggy in a rental car. :)
 
Neal Howard said:
Wichita Falls population 100k, has two municipal airports. The big one KSPS is owned and maintained mostly by the USAF but the city does own and maintain the civilian ramp and just built a new 14 million dollar terminal. Kickapoo airport KCWC is purely GA and makes enough revenue to pay for itself.
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SPS military controllers still ask all the fixed gear GA pilots if their gear is down? LOL...
 
Pilawt said:
Likewise KLMT Klamath Falls, Oregon. It must work; I've yet to leave the gear up when landing there in the 172 ...

:D
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tough to argue with a record of success like that
 
Nevada County Intentional Airpatch (KGOO) is county owned. Several FBOs tried to make a go of it, but County Counsel wrote a contract that called for things that would have driven Richard Branson out of business. Since the County doesn't have to pay for all the crap that Counsel wanted, they now run the fueling and FBO business.

Interesting that the same guy that named Nevada City and Nevada County CA also named our border state Nevada. I guess he liked snow ("nevada" is the Spanish for "snowy").

Jim
 
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