Founder and CEO of Upgraded Points, Alex is a leader in the industry and has earned and redeemed millions of points and miles. He frequently discusses the award travel industry with CNBC, Fox Business...
Edited by: Kellie Jez
Kellie’s professional experience has led her to a deep passion for compliance, data reporting, and process improvement. Kellie’s learned the ins and outs of the points and miles world and leads UP’s c...
5 comments
Michael
January 03, 2020
There is a major oversight in the initial data. Using Vermont as an example, while Burlington has a population of 42,000, that is only within the city limits. The county has over 150,000 people, and a decent small airport. So northern Vermont is not an airport desert. I would have to imagine the same is true for a number of other rural areas. A better map would be generated using county populations rather than just cities which are often a small portion of a regions area.
Hannah
February 02, 2020
I live in Victoria, Tx. Why are you comparing us with larger cities when it only takes 10-15 minutes to get from one side to the other so we have a tiny airport with 1 terminal.
Jarrod West
February 02, 2020
Hi Hannah,
The study compared which cities were furthest from an international airport, and the study concluded that Victora happened to be the furthest of all cities included in the study.
James Mauch
May 21, 2021
We completed some similar research recently. There are 5,086 public use airports in the US (plus another 8,000 or so private airports). Excluding Alaska (everything is far away), the public use airports are, on average, 6 miles from the nearest city.
Most of the public airports were built prior to WWII and some of those have disappeared (e.g., Miggs Field in Chicago) and we haven’t built many since then. We’ve expanded the 300 or so that handle 80% of the scheduled commercial airline service but the remain 4.600 or so service only private flying and air services. I have no doubt that there are ‘travel deserts’ where the residents are much further from commercial airline service. I also think it may not be as bad as the study suggests if, as one of the comments recommends, the local data is expanded to county level.
The solution to part of this problem is under development as we speak. Over $10B has been invested in public and private efforts in the first 5 months of this year alone which are focused on electric (vertical take off) aircraft with a range of 100-250 miles. These aircraft can operate out of any of the 5,086 public use airports to fill in the regional transportation demand (over 64 million regional business and regional trips per year), most of which is traveled by car today. One company, SamsonSky, is building a true flying car, I.e., a car that can travel up to 120 mph on the road and can convert to an airplane in 3 minutes and fly at over 180 mph in the air. So you can drive to one of the 5,086 public use airports (or one of the 8,000 private use airports if you have permission) and take off to an airport near your destination, land and drive the last few miles to your meeting or family retreat.
James Mauch
May 21, 2021
Victoria, TX is cited in the report as being the furthest from its nearest airport with airline services. In fact, there is a public use airport in Victoria, and, with the exception of Warner Robins, GA, there are public use airports in all of the 15 cities listed as furthest from their nearest airport with airline service. (There is an enormous AirForce base in Warner Robins.) This is the reason that electric aircraft and flying cars are currently being developed – they can all fly into and out of all public use airports.
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