[Tagging] Aerodrome classification

[Joseph Eisenberg]

> "number, size and surface of runways."

This information can already be mapped, but it isn't very helpful for
a person search for "closest airports to me" in an application.

There are a number of large aerodromes that do not have public
flights. Military airfields are a common example, but there are also
cargo-only airports, and airports that have been built, but lack
commercial service.

The airport in Everett, Washington just recently started commercial
passenger flights, but before it was used by Boeing to ship out their
new planes for years.

Their is a large airport in Palmdale, California which was built by
the organization that manages LAX, intended to server Los Angeles, but
it has not had any scheduled flights for over 10 years:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmdale_Regional_Airport

It seem to me that the presence of public passenger flights is the
basic idea of the word "airport" to the general public (pilots certain
have different ideas, but they have their own specialized databases),
and it would be good if we could tag this in a consistent way.

For use by pilots, and for people considering charter flights, it may
be useful to make a distinction between "general aviation" airports
that have services like hangars, fuel, staff etc, versus an airstrip
in a farmer's field which lacks any services or facilities other than
an unpaved runway.

On 5/20/19, Martin Koppenhoefer <dieterdreist at gmail.com> wrote:
> Am Mo., 20. Mai 2019 um 14:12 Uhr schrieb Joseph Eisenberg <
> joseph.eisenberg at gmail.com>:
>
>> How should we classify different types of aerodromes?
>>
>> We can already distinguish private aerodromes with the access tag
>> "access=private" and military aerodromes with "military=airfield", and
>> heliports have their own tag, but currently large international
>> airports and tiny airstrips are not clearly distinguished.
>>
>> I believe we can make a reasonable distinction between major classes
>> of aerodromes:
>>
>> 1) Airstrips without buildings or any other developed features
>>
>> 2) Developed general aviation aerodromes which do not offer any
>> regularly scheduled public, commercial passenger service
>>
>> 3) Commercial airports which offer regularly scheduled commercial
>> passenger service
>>
>
>
> other proposed classification systems have referred to number, size and
> surface of runways.
>
>
>
>>
>> History:
>>
>> In the very early years of OSM, there were three types of features
>> where planes could land: aeroway=airport for airports,
>> aeroway=airfield for undeveloped airstrips, and  aeroway=aerodrome for
>> general aviation sites, if I understand the history correctly. These
>> were rendered differently back in 2008, it appears, based on the old
>> discussion in the talk pages.
>>
>
>
> IIRR, airfield and airport were never promoted in the wiki, although there
> have been rendering rules, this wasn't established tagging by the time, and
> was more occassional than frequent use. There have been other rules as well
> (e.g. place=metropolis), which have never had any usage at all (unlike
> aeroway=airport, which had almost 450 uses by the beginning of 2008 and was
> then mass retagged).
>
>
> ...Some mappers have used
>
>> aeroway=airstrip for small airfields without buildings or any other
>> developed features, so that they will not be rendered. Others have
>> proposed tags to specify the type of aerodrome.
>>
>
>
> indeed aeroway=airstrip is "quite common" (4474 uses now, compared to 41000
> aerodromes and 50000 runways)
>
> Current tags for"subtagging" are
>
> 3 110 aerodrome:type
>
> with these values:
> public 1 291
> private 337
> regional 309
> military 293
> military/public 262
> airfield 237
> international 201
> gliding 66
> civil 54
> airstrip 20
>
>
> 1 379 aerodrome
>
> with these values:
> international 386
> airstrip 193
> public 167
> private 137
> regional 131
> airsport 77
> airfield 73
> mountain␣airfield 43
> gliding 41
> military 31
> domestic 24
>
>
>
>
>
> The most recent proposal in 2014 suggested using "aerodrome=*" which
> seems to fit best with the usual way of tagging the type or main
> classification of a feature.
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Aerodrome
>
> Cheers,
> Martin
>