According to the 2011-2015 National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS), there are over 19,700 airports in the United States. 5,170 of these airports are open to the general public and 503 of them serve commercial flights. Looking at this in comparison to Uganda, it could imply for about 17 airports per constituency. (Uganda has 290 constituencies) Wow! Just imagine that.
Since 1990, the number of public use airports in the United States has distinctively dropped as opposed to the number of private use airports which have increased in recent years. In 2018, there were 5,087 public airports in the U.S, a slight decrease from the 5,145 public airports operating in 2014. On the other hand, the number of private airports increased over this period from 13,863 to 14,549.
The difference between public and private use airports is about usage, not ownership as one could easily think. A public use airport is defined by the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) as ‘an airport available for use by the general public without a requirement for prior approval of the airport owner or operator’, whereas prior approval is required for private use airports. Included here under the term airport are also heliports, seaplane bases, and facilities for other aerial hobbies.
Never the less, the bigger reason for the many airports both Public and private use could be attributed to many domestic flights. Air transport is one of the most convenient and sort of by Americans given the provision of safety and timely considerations.
More so, North America is over 9,826,675 km² in total which would be a considerably a large driving area if one were to travel by car. This too contributes to a large amount of air travel travelers through the popular and smaller airports.
All in all, one would wonder how all these airports’ traffic could be controlled to avoid any collisions up in the space given that, at any given moment, there are approximately 5,000 aircraft traversing the U.S. skies. However, the FAA is a year-round, 24/7 operation, responsible for 5.3 million square miles of U.S. domestic airspace and 24 million square miles of U.S. airspace over the oceans. There are 43,290 average daily flights in and out of the U.S. More than 14,000 air traffic controllers manage traffic from many of the FAA’s 700 facilities. Fifty-five hundred airway transportation system specialists maintain more than 70,000 pieces of equipment.
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