What's the smallest commercial airport you've used?

[JayMass]

There were a few airports where I researched them. The Charles Schultz Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa has a single baggage claim area and I think two gates.

Same here! I flew into it from LAX, talk about a shocking difference!

 

[ksanftleben]

Palmdale Regional Airport in California back in the 1990s. The two scariest regularly scheduled civilian flight experiences I ever had. Had to take tiny SkyWest turboprops from LAX. I'm not sure that Palmdale even operates as an airport anymore. If you count public airports with no scheduled flights but servicing civilian charter aircraft, the smallest would be Barstow-Daggett in the late 1980s; what a dump.

 

[JayMass]

There were a few airports where I researched them. The Charles Schultz Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa has a single baggage claim area and I think two gates.

Same here! I flew into it from LAX, talk about a shocking difference!

 

[izzy]

Weyers Cave, VA. The person who checked you in also worked security and loaded the bags on the plane. I’m not so sure this person wasn’t also the pilot. (kidding, I’m just kidding!). Anyway, its the only place where each seat on the plane was both a window and an aisle seat, and they switched people around to distribute the weight more evenly. The only good thing I could say about the airport was that it provided free parking.

 

[bcla]

Gillette Wyoming -- I don't think there were any gates, we just walked out the back door up and up the portable ramp...

I would say that's a real airport. I looked it up and the place has a terminal, security, etc. No jetways, but that's not all that uncommon for small airports.

I've been to some airports in Asia where some gates opened to buses picking up passengers and then to where the planes were parked on the tarmac in designated areas.

 

[Lumpy1106]

Palmdale Regional Airport in California back in the 1990s. The two scariest regularly scheduled civilian flight experiences I ever had. Had to take tiny SkyWest turboprops from LAX. I'm not sure that Palmdale even operates as an airport anymore. If you count public airports with no scheduled flights but servicing civilian charter aircraft, the smallest would be Barstow-Daggett in the late 1980s; what a dump.

I have a degree in Civil Engineering and when I was in school our department head SWORE the Palmdale airport was the future of aviation in So Cal. Uhh...not so much.

Edit to add; There are a surprising number of fully-built-out airports in So Cal with few if any flights. Long Beach for a long time (we'll see now that Jet Blue pulled out), Palmdale, Ontario, San Bernardino, even Palm Springs all fit that description.

Edit to add again; Anyone ever flown out of Carlsbad? I almost took a short-hop flight from there to San Diego to get on a plane to Maui one time. The short-hop plus the long flight was cheaper than just getting on the plane in San Diego. Flight times were a mess or we would have done it. I'll never understand airline pricing.

 

[Dan Murphy]

Lee C Fine airport in Missouri. Heading to Lake of the Ozarks.

 

[Callie]

My hometown airport of south bend Indiana. Back in the day the gates were just literally a holding room with no restaurants and small. Always had to connect too. Glad I moved to an area with more direct flights and bigger airport.

 

[tvguy]

Lanai Airport Lanai, Hawaii when Dole still owned the island back in January 1977. No lights on the runway, no gates, just a roof. Looking at the current street view, that airport has multiple gates (looks like 4) now. But there are a couple of resorts there now. No hotels there in 1977, we had a permit and camped on the beach for 2 weeks at the site of where one of the resorts, Four Seasons Resort Lanai on Hulop'e Beach

 

[China Expat]

The airport in the of town Leh, India, high in the Himalayas in the Ladakh Valley. Super high altitude and elevation, small dirt runway. Amazing.

 

[loves to dive]

Two that I can think of - Little Cayman Island. The planes were so small that they didn't put your luggage on the same plane as you, they sent it on a plane with no people. The other one was on Saba and it was a tiny little air strip that you approached from the ocean and it had a mountain on the other side.

 

[ronandannette]

Not a fair question for Canadians to answer. There are tons of regional airports from coast-to-coast that are single rooms with one runway and not even what you'd call a gate; just a door out to the tarmac. You have to get to a pretty big city to find an airport that's any larger.

 

[Katiebird]

Pullman, Washington. Two gates, which really just meant two doors on ground level to walk out to the staircase to the plane. Iirc the entire operation was in one big room, with one area fenced off as past security. This was 20 years ago so may have changed.

The list you posted mentions San Diego International Airport but doesn't list the numbers. I looked it up and SAN is on 663 acres compared to the 2500 for SEA. It's just a single runway and many claim it's one of the craziest landings at a major airport because of all the buildings. However, it's still a pretty busy airport.

San Diego is a big airport in a tiny space. I'm used to it but the planes almost skim the top of the buildings coming in to land, it's pretty wild from the ground. I’ve heard that San Diego and San Francisco are some of the hardest runways to land.

 

[mmouse37]

White Plains, NY
Key West, FL
Redmond, OR
Sioux Falls, SD
Cheyenne Regional, WY

All are pretty small

MJ

 

[JimMIA]

My bad. There's a Naples International Airport (Aeroporto Internazionale di Napoli). Obviously not Naples, Florida. Seems pretty cozy.

Darn Google will trip you up occasionally -- lol.

 

[bcla]

Lanai Airport Lanai, Hawaii when Dole still owned the island back in January 1977. No lights on the runway, no gates, just a roof. Looking at the current street view, that airport has multiple gates (looks like 4) now. But there are a couple of resorts there now. No hotels there in 1977, we had a permit and camped on the beach for 2 weeks at the site of where one of the resorts, Four Seasons Resort Lanai on Hulop'e Beach

Did Larry Ellison rename the airport after himself?

 

[bcla]

Pullman, Washington. Two gates, which really just meant two doors on ground level to walk out to the staircase to the plane. Iirc the entire operation was in one big room, with one area fenced off as past security. This was 20 years ago so may have changed.



San Diego is a big airport in a tiny space. I'm used to it but the planes almost skim the top of the buildings coming in to land, it's pretty wild from the ground. I’ve heard that San Diego and San Francisco are some of the hardest runways to land.

I used to follow college sports more than I do now, and I heard about travel to Pullman, which was usually to Spokane and then a two hour bus ride to Pullman. I wondered why teams didn't just fly into Pullman and I was told if the weather was bad it would close the runways in winter.

And yeah San Diego is extreme. SeaTac is three parallel runways so there's a little bit of spacing. San Diego just packs everything into a single runway. It's the tightest space for a major airport I've been to.

Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong was even tighter. Just a single runway on reclaimed land and just enough room for a couple of terminals. There are tons of photos and video of planes looking like they're going to scrape the buildings.

San Francisco's problems aren't really with size. The design dated back to the 1930s and the parallel runways are spaced about 250 feet apart. It's not suitable for simultaneous instrument landings in poor visibility. They've wanted to build more reclaimed land to properly space the runways, but it's tough getting permission to do so. There's talk about perhaps trading some land where there's salt harvesting to make up for this, but the owner doesn't want to sell.

 

[charmed59]

In the US in recent the smallest I’ve been in is Bar Harbor, Maine. The TSA agent doubled as the checkin lady and the one that loaded luggage on the plane. She actually opened each piece of luggage.

When I first flew to Maui you would wander down the steps of the plane to a courtyard and all the luggage was spread out on tables to pick up. Leaving you lined up in the court yard and wandered to the plane.

Internationally there’ve been a few dirt runways. The only building at the airport in the Maasai Mara was an outhouse. The plane would show up, someone would hop out and call names.

 

[barkley]

either santa rosa ca or redding ca.

 

[gwynne]

A. B. Wonpat International Airport Guam