There are over 14,000 private airports in the United States. There are nearly 5,000 public airports, heliports, and seaports in the USA. Airports are organized into categories based off of their primary purpose.
The categories of airports are
- Commercial Service
- Reliever
- General Aviation
A commercial service airport can be further categorized into large hub, medium hub, small hub, non-hub, and nonprimary commercial service non-hub.
A reliever airport is a designation by the Secretary of Transportation to relieve congestion at a commercial service airport so that it can provide more access to the general aviation community.
A general aviation airport does not have scheduled service or if it does have scheduled service then the passenger boardings total less than 2,500 per year.
If a commercial service airport is designated as a Large Hub then that indicates that it receives 1 percent or more of the annual commercial enplanements in the United States. For it to be designated as a Medium Hub airport it indicates that it receives between .25 and 1% of the total commercial enplanements in the United States. A Small Hub is an airport that gets between .05 to .25 of the United States commercial enplanements. A non-hub airport receives more than 10,000 commercial enplanements but less than .05%. Lastly, a nonprimary commercial service, nonhub has regular scheduled passenger service but the enplanements range between 2,500 to 10,000 annually. Join my Mailchimp audience
Further, a nonprimary airport may be classified as national, regional, local, basic, or unclassified. To receive the national designation it must provide access to other markets in the United States and to international markets A regional designation is given if it connects communities to other regional and national markets. The local designation is provided to airports that provide access to other areas within the state and immediate region. A basic designation is given when it provides access to emergency response, air ambulance services, flight training, and recreational flying.
