Guide to Evaluating Airport Governance Structures (2022)

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17   Overview When airports, communities, and consultants are assessing whether an existing governance structure is effective for their current environment, they often compare their governance struc- ture to that of “peer airports.” Benchmarking governance structures requires significant time and resources and is often limited to an analysis of 5–10 airports determined to be comparable or aspirational peer airports. At airports with limited resources, this type of analysis can be costly and time prohibitive. The CMT team aims to overcome these limitations by presenting a publicly avail- able database that allows users to search for details on the governance structure, recent governance transitions, enplanements, operation counts, and future development projects (in dollars) of all public-use airports in the United States. Additionally, the research team has created a GIS map to allow users to quickly filter and identify peer airports across various geographic locations. The GIS mapping tool is described in a separate user guide. Method In order to establish baseline information for each airport in the NPIAS, the research team merged the data in Appendix A of the 2019–2023 NPIAS with selected fields from the FAA’s Airports Facilities Database (AFD),2 which is a compilation of FAA Form 5010 information for all airports, including geocoded latitude and longitude. Specifically, the research team filtered NPIAS airports in the AFD to isolate the 3,328 fields in Appendix A of the NPIAS. Next, the research team merged these data into the filtered airports from the AFD. The NPIAS data that were merged include: • Current NPIAS category (primary, commercial service, reliever, GA) • 5-year NPIAS category • GA airport role (national, regional, basic, local, unclassified)3 • FAA hub classification (large, medium, small, non)4 • Enplanements • Based aircraft • 5-year development estimates (2019–2023) Next, the research team downloaded and merged the current, past 5-year, and future 5-year data from the FAA’s terminal area forecast (TAF) for each airport in the database. Specifically, the research team included the following fields from the TAF for each airport from 2013 to 2023: • Itinerant air carrier operations • Itinerant air taxi operations • Itinerant GA operations C H A P T E R 3 Description of the Airport Governance Database and Mapping Tool

18 Guide to Evaluating Airport Governance Structures • Itinerant military operations • Total itinerant operations • Local civil operations • Local military operations • Total local operations • Total operations • Total Terminal Radar Approach Control Facilities (TRACON) operations • Based aircraft Next, the research team conducted web-based searches to identify the characteristics of each airport’s governance arrangement. Specifically, the research team adhered to the following procedure in determining an airport’s governance arrangement: 1. Locate airport website using airport name from FAA AFD and paste into the database 2. If applicable, locate website for governing body (if separate from airport) and paste into the database 3. Identify name of the governing body (as specific as possible) and list in database 4. Based on FAA AFD, information from airport website, and other information, select the form of governance from the list below by marking 0 for no or 1 for yes: – City-owned – County-owned – Multijurisdictional – Number of communities in multijurisdictional arrangement – State-operated – University-operated – Port authority – Airport authority – Other – List other form of governance 5. Using the data sources from step 4, if available, note the following governance structure char- acteristics for each airport: – Number of commissioners or board members (actual number) – Length of term (actual number) – Compensation for board/commission members – Airport advisory board – Number of airport advisory board members (actual number) – Airport advisory board length of term (actual number) – Advisory board compensation