Airport Ownership

The United States has the largest, most exten­sive airport system in the world. There are some 19,700 airports in the United States, ranging from world-class international airports to grass strips. Most of these airports are small, private fields, but 5,300 of these airports are for public use. Of these, 3,356 are designated as part of the National Airport System (NAS). NAS airports are entitled to federal aid, and they are categorized by the FAA as follows:

Commercial Service Airports (503 air­ports) are publicly owned airports that have at least 2,500 passenger boardings each
calendar year and receive scheduled passen­ger service. Of these:

382 are primary airports designated as large, medium, small, or nonhub, with more than 10,000 passenger boardings per year; and

121 nonprimary airports with between 2,500 and 9,999 passenger boardings per year

Reliever Airports (269 airports) are desig­nated by the FAA to relieve congestion at Commercial Service Airports and to provide improved general aviation access.

General Aviation Airports (2,560 airports) comprise the remaining airports including privately owned, public use airports that enplane more than 2,500 passengers annu­ally and receive scheduled airline service.

All of these airports are included in the FAA’s National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems.

Since 2007 air traffic hubs are designated as geographical areas based on the percentage of total passengers enplaned in the area. Under this designation, a hub may have more than one airport in it. (This definition of hub should not be confused with the definition used by the airlines in describing their "hub-and-spoke” route structures). Individual communities fall into four hub classifications as determined by each community’s per­centage of total enplaned revenue passengers in all services and all operations of U. S. certificated route carriers within the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and other U. S. areas. For 2004-2006, hub designation is based on passenger boardings at individual airports as designated by the FAA. Classifications are based on the percentage of total enplaned revenue passengers for each year according to the following: Large = 1 percent or more, Medium = 0.25 to 0.9999 percent, Small = 0.05 to 0.249 percent, Nonhub = less than 0.05.

SOURCE: U. S. Department of Transportation, Research and Innovative Technology Administration, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Office of Airline Information, Airport Activity Statistics Database (Form 41 Schedule T-3), special tabulation, October 2010.

TABLE 33-1 Domestic enplanements at U. S. airports: 2004-2010.

A limited number of these airports have contracted out some of their operations to private, commercial management, primarily at medium hub airports.2 Airports are further classified by the FAA on the basis of percentages:

9 Large hub airports (at least 1.0 percent of total national enplanements)

• Medium hub airports (less than 1.0 percent but more than.25 percent of total national enplanements)

• Small hub airports (less than.25 percent but more than.05 percent of total national enplanements)

• Non-hub airports

Even though commercial airports are mostly publicly owned, private enterprise plays a sig­nificant role in their operation. Private companies provide 90 percent of the employees who work at these airports, or work for the airlines them­selves, or concessionaires and contractors.