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Zoom20ga

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Zoom20GA
I’m sorry I am quite late to the game in private airports with approaches. There are very few privately owned general aviation fields left in this country. Less than 35 actually. To land at one of these you most likely do need permission, and for instrument use you do need to get a plate of high we have to authorize. These are FAA rules but also protect us from having people come on to private property for our protection. Someone a while back had asked about my airport 20GA and said the man who he contacted was helpful but ‘almost apologetic’ and wasn’t sure he knew what he was talking about. He was correct in saying you need a plate. We are very accommodating to pilots who wish to use the 4500’ airport, but permission is required, just call.
 
Zoom20ga said:
There are very few privately owned general aviation fields left in this country. Less than 35 actually.
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Where did you get that number? I suspect that it's actually much more.
 
???

The OP looks like a response to some other post, but posted as a new thread instead. First post by the user, too.

There are way more than 35 private airports in this country. I am pretty sure there are more than 35 private airports within 100 nm of me right now. Here's ~20 in only a ~2000 sq mi area:

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Here's his airport, 20GA "Earl L. Small Jr. Field/Stockmar." Class E starting at 700 AGL seems a little unusual for a private airport, and probably a good hint that it has an approach. Maybe he's saying there are fewer than 35 private airports with instrument approaches, but that still seems like a low estimate considering all the private airparks. The plate(s) for 20GA aren't available on Foreflight, FWIW.
 

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ColinD said:
Maybe he's saying there are fewer than 35 private airports with instrument approaches, but that still seems like a low estimate considering all the private airparks.
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I wondered if that was he meant, too, and agree that still seems low. Not sure how you'd go about getting the data unless you knew someone in the TERPS world.
 
Zoom20ga said:
I’m sorry I am quite late to the game in private airports with approaches. There are very few privately owned general aviation fields left in this country. Less than 35 actually. To land at one of these you most likely do need permission, and for instrument use you do need to get a plate of high we have to authorize. These are FAA rules but also protect us from having people come on to private property for our protection. Someone a while back had asked about my airport 20GA and said the man who he contacted was helpful but ‘almost apologetic’ and wasn’t sure he knew what he was talking about. He was correct in saying you need a plate. We are very accommodating to pilots who wish to use the 4500’ airport, but permission is required, just call.
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I would be willing to bet there are more private fields than there are public ones.
 
Morgan3820 said:
I would be willing to bet there are more private fields than there are public ones.
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It depends a little on what you consider "private." There are airports open to public use which are privately owned. BQ1 (no IAPs) where the Pik n Pig is located is one of those. So is Apopka in Florida (X04), and Catalina Island (AVX) in California (with AIPs). Probably a bunch of those. I wouldn't be surprised if the number exceeded publicly owned airports by a lot.

Then there are privately owned airports which are for private use - the ones we need permission to fly into. We actually have one that changed from public use to private use recently. I'd be amazed if there were only 35 of those. There's probably a dozen within 20nm of my home base.
 
Maybe there are 35 private airports in his county, or 35 in the country with instrument approaches. There are over 8 THOUSAND private airports in the US, ranging from short grass strips to 10,000 concrete runways. Add in private heliports and seaplane bases, the number is nearly 15,000.
 
Zoom20ga said:
I’m sorry I am quite late to the game in private airports with approaches. There are very few privately owned general aviation fields left in this country. Less than 35 actually. To land at one of these you most likely do need permission, and for instrument use you do need to get a plate of high we have to authorize. These are FAA rules but also protect us from having people come on to private property for our protection. Someone a while back had asked about my airport 20GA and said the man who he contacted was helpful but ‘almost apologetic’ and wasn’t sure he knew what he was talking about. He was correct in saying you need a plate. We are very accommodating to pilots who wish to use the 4500’ airport, but permission is required, just call.
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Last I checked there are around 18,000 known landing surfaces in the US, of which 5,000 are public use, and of the 5,000, about 3,300 are identified in the FAA National Plan and are mostly publicly owned.

There are quite a few privately owned airports, many of which are open to public use. Some private use airports require no permission and are essentially open for public use...they're considered public use because the state may have certain standards for public use airports that those airports don't meet, such as obstruction surfaces, building set-backs, etc.
 
Zoom20ga said:
I’m sorry I am quite late to the game in private airports with approaches. There are very few privately owned general aviation fields left in this country. Less than 35 actually. To land at one of these you most likely do need permission, and for instrument use you do need to get a plate of high we have to authorize. These are FAA rules but also protect us from having people come on to private property for our protection. Someone a while back had asked about my airport 20GA and said the man who he contacted was helpful but ‘almost apologetic’ and wasn’t sure he knew what he was talking about. He was correct in saying you need a plate. We are very accommodating to pilots who wish to use the 4500’ airport, but permission is required, just call.
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You seem to have a great lack of understanding and possible mis-guidance. I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, but it shouldn't be any surprise why privately owned airports don't have IAP's. These airports don't get any federal or state assistance, so it would be completely out of pocket to fund an approach and they cost thousands, like beyond $100k, not to mention the maintenance associated with their upkeep.
 
I suspect there are many private GA airports in the US that have unpublished, unadvertised, unconfirmed, and unauthorized GPS approaches. The procedures are most likely only shared with the current residents because the airfield/Airpark is, well…private.
 
asicer said:
Where did you get that number? I suspect that it's actually much more.
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The FAA when I paid my approach fee private airports general aviation with approaches.
 
Zoom20ga said:
The FAA when I paid my approach fee private airports general aviation with approaches.
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What is this approach fee you speak of? I’m genuinely curious.
 
Zoom20ga said:
There are very few privately owned general aviation fields left in this country. Less than 35 actually.
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I see 1002 privately owned, public use airports:

Code: 
% grep -c PRPU APT.txt 
1002

How many have approaches is left as an exercise to the reader.
 
GeorgeC said:
I see 1002 privately owned, public use airports:

Code: 
% grep -c PRPU APT.txt
1002

How many have approaches is left as an exercise to the reader.
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Yup, my home field (SNC) is privately owned (by Whelan, the light people) and public use, and has approaches.
 
My home field is privately owned and public use and has an instrument approach.
 
Back in the 80's and 90's I helped manage a private airport with an NDB and later a NDB/GPS approach. I want to say it cost 2-3,000 dollars a year to have it flight checked plus the cost of keeping the NDB operational. Back then if someone wanted to use our approach, I would just fax them the approach plate.

Around 10 years ago we had some trips scheduled into Horseshoe Bay, TX, which has a private approach which I had used in the 80's, but it had changed from NDB to GPS, I found out that we would need an LOA from the FAA to use it. It would take a few weeks or months to get the LOA and we did not have the time. One of the trips we ended up KBMQ because of the low weather.
 
And I’ve landed at a private PPR with an approach to it.
 
I used to instruct out of a private airport in WV. At the time the airport had a VOR-A approach.

A quick search and it still has the VOR-A and also a GPS-A approach, probably an overlay.

And still privately owned, and appears to be growing.
 
Zoom20ga said:
I’m sorry I am quite late to the game in private airports with approaches. There are very few privately owned general aviation fields left in this country. Less than 35 actually. To land at one of these you most likely do need permission, and for instrument use you do need to get a plate of high we have to authorize. These are FAA rules but also protect us from having people come on to private property for our protection. Someone a while back had asked about my airport 20GA and said the man who he contacted was helpful but ‘almost apologetic’ and wasn’t sure he knew what he was talking about. He was correct in saying you need a plate. We are very accommodating to pilots who wish to use the 4500’ airport, but permission is required, just call.
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Howza bout changing the airport ID to 12GA. Folk tend to pay a little more attention 12 gauges than 20 gauges.
 
luvflyin said:
Howza bout changing the airport ID to 12GA. Folk tend to pay a little more attention 12 gauges than 20 gauges.
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I prefer 12 ga to 20 ga, too, but for a different reason. You can't wire a house with 20, it'll burn down, but 12 is fine for most things except the stove and dryer.
 
luvflyin said:
Howza bout changing the airport ID to 12GA. Folk tend to pay a little more attention 12 gauges than 20 gauges.
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When you put down pheasant with a 28 ga you might get some attention.
 
Zoom20ga said:
I’m sorry I am quite late to the game in private airports with approaches. There are very few privately owned general aviation fields left in this country. Less than 35 actually. To land at one of these you most likely do need permission, and for instrument use you do need to get a plate of high we have to authorize. These are FAA rules but also protect us from having people come on to private property for our protection. Someone a while back had asked about my airport 20GA and said the man who he contacted was helpful but ‘almost apologetic’ and wasn’t sure he knew what he was talking about. He was correct in saying you need a plate. We are very accommodating to pilots who wish to use the 4500’ airport, but permission is required, just call.
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Near as I can tell, it’s a private airport. Period. Not a privately owned public access airport. So. The way I understand it, if not public ‘use’, it’s your choice whether to have it Charted or not. Get it off the Sectional and you’re less likely to have unwelcome visitors
 
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luvflyin said:
Near as I can tell, it’s a private airport. Period. Not a privately owned public access airport. So. The way I understand it, if not public ‘use’, it’s your choice whether to have it Charted or not. Get it off the Sectional and you’re less likely to have unwelcome visitors
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It's marked (Pvt) on the sectional, which means that it's not public use. This is confirmed by SkyVector's page for the field.
 
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