Airport Master Plan October 1985

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5.0 AIRPORT ACTIVITY FORECASTS 5.1 Historical Activity Statistics on aircraft operations and based aircraft at small general aviation airports are generally unavailable or very limited. Statistics at privately owned airports are exceedingly limited. MN/DOT Division of Aeronautics, however, has prepared Federal Aviation Administration's 5010-1 master records for recent years estimating the number of operations and based aircraft as well as providing faci- lity information at Gateway. Table 5-1 outlines historic based aircraft and operations characteristics for 1979 through 1982. No data is available for 1983. It is, however, significant that over 30 aircraft were based at the field within recent years including a light twin engine aircraft. As of mid-1984, the number of based aircraft as determined by the FBO was 12.* As is readily apparent, a significant drop has occurred in the numbers of based aircraft and operations. Primary factors which this may be attributed to are: (1) A general decline, nationwide, in general aviation activity during this time period reflecting economic conditions, (2) condition and limited useability of the physical faci- lities in various weather conditions, (3) availability of service and aircraft storage hangars for users. Historic operations are estimated and appear to be somewhat on the high side compared to other general aviation airports with similar numbers of based aircraft. Itinerant opera- tions (flights to or from another airport as opposed to local training or proficiency flights) appear to be somewhat underestimated. Itinerant operations for 1979 are estimated at approximately 6% of total operations increasing to approximately 11% of total operations in 1982. s *Unconfirmed responses to the aircraft usage survey reported 16 air- craft based or about to be based. 5-1