Busy Commercial Airports in the United States

Nov 27, 2018
Heavily Used Airports in the US

The map above shows the number of airports in each US state that serve at least 15,000 passengers per year.  Texas leads all other US states and beats California by a slim margin.

Findings

  • Texas has the most airports in the US that serve at least 15,000 passengers annually at 24.
  • Delaware has the least at none.  Of the states that do have a busy airport Vermont has the least with one.
  • New York and Florida have considerably smaller areas than several Western states but have many more busy airports.
  • The median number of busy airports in the US is 5, the mean 6.96.

Caveats

  • The data is from 2017.
  • The map is presented in an Albers equal-area conic projection.
  • The choropleth classification is based on Jenks or natural breaks.

Details

Even though Alaska has one of the smallest populations in the US, it still has a lot of busy airports, likely due to the fact that the road network is very limited in the state and bush planes make up a large part of the state's transportation.  Delaware has not had a busy airport since the last major commercial airliner stopped flying to Wilmington in 2015.

Texas, California, Alaska, Florida, and New York make up one-quarter of the nation's busy airports.  Thirteen states make up half of the busy airports in the US: Texas, California, Alaska, Florida, New York, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Washington, and any of Minnesota, Ohio, Virginia, or Wisconsin.  Adding another thirteen states and the leading 26 states makes up three-quarters of the country's busy airports.

Data

StateAirports (>15,000 Passengers)
Alabama5
Alaska21
Arizona9
Arkansas4
California22
Colorado9
Connecticut2
Delaware0
Florida19
Georgia7
Hawaii7
Idaho6
Illinois9
Indiana4
Iowa5
Kansas3
Kentucky5
Louisiana7
Maine3
Maryland3
Massachusetts5
Michigan14
Minnesota8
Mississippi4
Missouri5
Montana7
Nebraska3
Nevada4
New Hampshire2
New Jersey3
New Mexico4
New York16
North Carolina10
North Dakota6
Ohio8
Oklahoma4
Oregon4
Pennsylvania9
Rhode Island3
South Carolina6
South Dakota4
Tennessee5
Texas24
Utah5
Vermont1
Virginia8
Washington9
West Virginia3
Wisconsin8
Wyoming6

Sources

Federal Aviation Authority.  2018.  "Enplanements of All Commercial Service Airports (by Rank)."  Accessed November 26, 2018.  https://www.faa.gov/airports/planning_capacity/passenger_allcargo_stats/passenger/media/cy17-commercial-service-enplanements.pdf.

Filed under: Cartography