How many airports are in the US: 18,999 landing facilities, 5,009 open to the public, and the free FAA list

This page is for anyone who needs the number of airports in the US, and for companies that sell to them: airfield construction, lighting and pavement, security and screening, operations and inspection software, aircraft rescue and firefighting equipment, ground support, concessions and consulting. It reconciles the official counts, breaks them down by type, use, size and state, shows how to download the FAA's list and works through an example.

How many airports there are in the US

FAA counts include 60 facilities in Puerto Rico and the other territories. In the 50 states and DC there are 18,939 facilities and 12,565 airports.

Why the counts differ

• "Airport" can mean any landing facility. The FAA database counts heliports and seaplane bases alongside airports. More than half of the 5,693 heliports (2,975) are flagged for medical use.
• Most facilities are private. 13,990 are private use, including 7,870 airports and 5,637 heliports. You need the owner's permission to land, and most don't buy like a public airport.
• Public use isn't public ownership. Of the 4,721 public-use airports, 3,941 are owned by a city, county, state or airport authority, 759 by private owners and 21 by the military.
• Certificated and commercial service measure different things. Part 139 is an FAA safety certificate; commercial service status is a count of boardings, so the two lists overlap without matching.
• Status changes. Another 285 US facilities are listed as closed indefinitely and aren't in these counts.

Airports by type and use

By ownership, 8,340 airports are privately owned, 4,037 publicly owned and 214 owned by the Air Force, Army, Navy or Coast Guard. 3,243 public-use airports are in the NPIAS.

Commercial airports by size

The FAA groups commercial service airports by their share of all US passenger boardings (49 U.S.C. 47102):

Another 1,160 airports reported some boardings but don't qualify as commercial service. The busiest in 2025 were Atlanta (51,459,786 boardings), Dallas-Fort Worth (41,297,009), Chicago O'Hare (40,680,735), Denver (39,976,695) and Los Angeles (36,497,303). Every other public-use airport is, in the statute's terms, a general aviation airport.

Airports by state

FAA airport data effective 29 October 2026, operational facilities only.

Alaska has the second-most public-use airports in the country. Michigan (204), Kansas (149) and Minnesota (135) also rank high for public-use airports, although they're outside the top ten by total facilities.

How to download a list of airports

1. The FAA's airport data. Every 28 days the FAA publishes its National Airspace System Resource (NASR) data free, including an airport CSV package. APT_BASE.csv has one row per facility: FAA identifier, name, city, county, state, facility type, ownership, public or private use, coordinates, Part 139 class, NPIAS and federal agreement codes and tower type.
2. Contacts. APT_CON.csv gives the owner and manager of each facility with mailing address and phone; 4,704 of the 4,721 public-use airports list a manager's phone number. APT_RWY.csv adds runway length and surface.
3. Traffic. The FAA's passenger boarding spreadsheets rank every airport by boardings and give its hub category; the calendar 2025 file was published in September 2026.
4. Federal grants. USAspending.gov lists every grant under assistance listing 20.106 (the Airport Improvement Program, with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and COVID-19 airport programs), with recipient, amount and project description.

Join the files on the FAA site number. The contacts are named people, often a city employee at a small airport, so use them for business outreach only.

Who buys at an airport

Most public airports are run by a city, county or airport authority, so buying follows public procurement rules: published bids, board or council approval for large contracts and federal requirements on anything paid for with grants. As general guidance:

At a small general aviation airport, the manager may be the whole staff and the city council approves spending. Federal money drives the capital calendar: USAspending shows $8.89 billion obligated in fiscal 2025 under assistance listing 20.106, up from $6.67 billion in fiscal 2024, led by California ($869 million), Florida ($663 million) and Texas ($653 million). Each grant names the airport sponsor and the project, a dated signal of what's being built.

Worked example: inspection software for Southeast airline airports

Illustrative example. The company and its rates are invented; the counts come from the FAA's airport data effective 29 October 2026.

The seller: Runwaylog (runwaylog.example) sells mobile software for airfield self-inspections. The territory: Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina.

1. Count the market. The FAA data lists 83 Part 139 airports in the seven states: Florida 27, North Carolina 14, Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi 9 each, Tennessee 8 and South Carolina 7. 69 have scheduled airline service.
2. Use the rule. Part 139 requires a certificated airport to inspect its airfield daily and keep each inspection record for at least 12 consecutive months (14 CFR 139.327). Every one of the 83 already does the work; the question is whether they do it on paper.
3. Do the arithmetic. If an illustrative 40% still use paper or spreadsheets, that's 33 prospects. Winning a quarter over a year gives 8 airports; at an illustrative $15,000 a year each, that's $120,000 in annual revenue.
4. Find the buyer. APT_CON.csv gives each airport's manager and phone; the operations manager runs inspections day to day. Finding that person and what's changed (a new terminal, a recent FAA inspection finding, a new director) is the slow part; Bebop finds the contacts and researches each airport in the list.

Next step: profile each target airport with the account research template, and see selling to government for how public bids work.