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Just curious if there are any other Airport Planners on C-D. I graduated from FIT - Aviation Management with Flight. I am certified Commercial Instrument SEL and MEL, although I haven't flown in years... something I would love to pick up again once time/money allows. I went another route and currently work as an airport planner at an engineering firm. Was previously at an architecture firm doing the same thing. Would love to connect with other planners!
I work in Airport Operations at a major international airport. It's basically the day to day runnings of the airport (specifically, we're in charge of making sure the airfield stays within FAR part 139 compliance). We do runway inspections, pick up FOD, escort aircraft, respond to emergencies, etc....
We have a whole aviation planning department in our offices downtown (as well as a good number of consultants) that do more long term planning, like working on our master plan. They do a lot of work with part 77 surfaces and such. I'm fairly knowledgeable about part 77, but it always gives me a headache when I try to remember the exact ratios of the imaginary surfaces and such.
I have a few friends that went the Ops route as well. I got a little taste of it out at COS when I was visiting friends there. It does seem that most larger airports have their own planners on staff.
Yeah, I don't know how common it is overall, but we own 3 airports utilizing the second busiest airspace in the world (probably not hard to guess where I work...), so we do have our own in house planning team, but we do a large amount of work with consultants as well.
There's pretty much not a time when there isn't at least a couple of constructions projects going on somewhere on the field.
I grew up in Brooklyn NY. I remember while in elementary school, we went on a field trip to what is now known as JFK. Back then it was Idlewild. Back then you could actually just drive to the airport, park for free, walk anywhere in the terminal and go up to an open observation deck to watch the planes and just hang out. I remember years later when I got my drivers license, one of the first thing I did was load the car with friends and go to the airport to see the new jet airliners that airlines were getting. And you walked outside and walked up a ladder to board.
Back then it was just one big building that all airlines shared. It was years before 'the planners' got involved with expansion of buildings, roads and runways. Things were alot simpler back then.
Airport planning and design is a unique field within the aviation realm. I myself never considered that particular aviation angle until I took an airport planning/design elective in my senior year of college. My professor was a full-time planner/part-time professor, which was very beneficial to the class. I know of several airport planning professionals who went on to work in this field as a result of randomly taking that elective in college. In my view, an entire aviation degree could be developed based on the depth and scope of airport and airspace design.
In my view, an entire aviation degree could be developed based on the depth and scope of airport and airspace design.
Totally agree and I think it's something that colleges should explore more. My major was aviation management where I took one planning course and one design course my entire 4 years there. Sure other classes helped out, but the amount of classes relevent to my specific career is probably less than 10. Why I needed to take classes such as Calculus and Humanities was beyond me... I would rather all my money go towards my specific major area.
and go up to an open observation deck to watch the planes and just hang out.
I wish the Observation decks at several other airports would also be brought back.
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