The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has a system for categorizing public-use

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surfa ...

s (along with

heliport A heliport is a small airport suitable for use by helicopters and some other vertical lift aircraft. Designated heliports typically contain one or more touchdown and liftoff areas and may also have limited facilities such as fuel or hangars. I ...

s and other aviation bases) that is primarily based on the level of commercial passenger traffic through each facility. It is used to determine whether an airport is eligible for funding through the federal government's Airport Improvement Program (AIP). Fewer than 20% of airports in the U.S. qualify for the program, though most that don't qualify are private-use-only airports. At the bottom end are

general aviation General aviation (GA) is defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as all civil aviation aircraft operations with the exception of commercial air transport or aerial work, which is defined as specialized aviation services ...

airports. To qualify for the AIP, they must have at least 10 aircraft based there but handle fewer than 2,500 scheduled passengers each year. This means that most aircraft are small and are operated by individuals or other private entities, and little or no commercial

airline An airline is a company that provides air transport services for traveling passengers and freight. Airlines use aircraft to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for codeshare agreements, in wh ...

traffic occurs. Nearly three-quarters of AIP-funded airports are of this type. Most of the remaining airfields that qualify for funding are commercial service airports and are more dependent on regularly scheduled commercial airline traffic. This is subcategorized into primary airports, which handle more than 10,000 passengers each year, and nonprimary airports, which handle between 2,500 and 10,000 passengers annually.Federal Aviation Administration: Airport Categories
/ref> These categories account for over 15% of AIP-funded airports in the U.S. A third major category contains reliever airports, which are essentially large general-aviation airports located in

metropolitan area A metropolitan area or metro is a region that consists of a densely populated urban agglomeration and its surrounding territories sharing industries, commercial areas, transport network, infrastructures and housing. A metro area usually ...

s that serve to offload small aircraft traffic from hub airports in the region. These account for the remaining 10% of AIP-funded airports.

Subcategories

Primary airports are further subcategorized based on the number of passenger boardings as a fraction of the national total. The categories are: *Nonhub primary – airports handling over 10,000 but less than 0.05% of the country's annual passenger boardings *Small hub primary – airports with 0.05 to 0.25% of the country's annual passenger boardings *Medium hub primary – airports handling 0.25 to 1% of the country's annual passenger boardings *Large hub primary – airports handling over 1% of the country's annual passenger boardings For reference, there were boardings at commercial airports in 2018, Includes a categorized list of all commercial airports with categories and boarding statistics. making the dividing lines , , and {{val, {{#expr:899663192*0.01 round 0, fmt=commas boardings per year.

References

* * Airport categories

Subcategories

See also

References