This article is published in Aviation Week & Space Technology and is free to read until Sep 25, 2025. If you want to read more articles from this publication, please click the link to subscribe.
The FAA reports that the U.S. has 5,000 public-use airports—no other country comes close. About 3,300 of those airports are eligible for federal funding, ranging from massive Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International to Colorado’s Boulder Municipal, whose two paved and turf strips are frequented by light aircraft with and without engines.
Like Boulder Municipal (BDU), most airports are general aviation (GA) facilities that serve business, charter and cargo aircraft; flight training; medical airlift; law enforcement and disaster relief; tourism and more. That extraordinary range represents some bazillion dollars in economic activity, which is why the FAA rightly labels the network “a national asset.”
It is therefore disturbingly ironic that the asset is being steadily diminished. In the 1970s, there were 7,000 such facilities, which is to say we have lost nearly a third since then. Long Island’s Deer Park Airport in New York, where I learned to fly, is among the sadly departed, swallowed by ever-expanding suburbia. The hunger has not abated. Just ask those who are backing California’s Santa Monica and Reid-Hillview, Cleveland’s Burke Lakefront, Connecticut’s Hartford-Brainard and so many other targeted GA airports.
The reasons for the appetite include complaints about aircraft noise, fumes and now lead, along with concerns about safety and tax dollars expended. But in almost all cases, complementing such motivators is a craving for airport land—tantalizingly flat, open, close-in acreage—and the housing, hotels, shops, offices and eateries they could accommodate and the local tax revenue they would generate.
As many anti-airporters have learned, those imaginings can be flawed. After all, more housing means more schools and teachers, more demands on government services and infrastructure, more road traffic and maintenance, and more complaints about all the foregoing, along with the end of airport benefits. Beyond that, the FAA can demand repayment of grants it provided, some of which require that an airport operate in perpetuity. Moreover, under its current reauthorization, the agency can forbid the closing of a “grant-obligated” airport unless a replacement is built or the shutdown furthers broader aviation interests.
Thus, when residents and their officials come to understand the consequences of eliminating an airport, the course then chosen can be quite different from what they initially expected. This has been demonstrated time and again, most recently in the aforementioned Front Range city of Boulder.
BDU was a dirt strip when founded a century ago. Over the decades, it was expanded to 179 acres, the runway paved, service buildings erected, ramp laid down and a parallel turf strip created. Federal funds facilitated a variety of those improvements with the guarantee that the airport would not close. Today it is home to some 130 airplanes, 40 gliders and a pair of helicopters. It also accounts for 260 jobs and contributes $57 million to the area’s economy annually.
Self-sufficient, the airport seemed well accepted by residents until a few years ago, when some individuals began complaining about aircraft noise and leaded avgas and suggested that the runways and hangars give way to affordable housing. They circulated a ballot proposal promoting the housing idea—downplaying the airport’s consequent closure—and got the required 3,500 signatures.
Seeing that unfolding, BDU’s supporters acted, with Jan Burton, a former Boulder City Council member and Cirrus SR22T owner-pilot, in the fore. They briefed city leaders and created a website detailing how the airport benefited the community while noting that its closure would likely result in daunting penalties. They invited questions and comments, authored positive articles for the local paper, held a well-attended rally and established a ballot measure committee to fund community outreach. They also enlisted the support of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, whose Airport Support Network exists for just such a purpose.
Burton says the response from the general population was overwhelmingly in favor of BDU’s continuation, which she found reassuring and “heartwarming.”
However, in July 2024, the city government had become so concerned with the impending fiscal penalties for shuttering BDU that it filed a lawsuit against the FAA seeking a release from its grant obligations. Thereupon, the anti-airporters withdrew their ballot proposals for closure and housing. The FAA is seeking to have the city’s lawsuit tossed. Meanwhile, BDU’s takeoffs and landings continue into the airport’s second century.
“I guess you could say we won the battle,” Burton says. “But we don’t feel like this is over.”
Sadly, many know that feeling, and with good reason.
Related Content
