"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
ups.com...
[...]
Heck, even the number of public use airports appears to have risen.
Why is AOPA saying otherwise?

Off the top of my head, my recollection is that AOPA's figure is the number
of airports that are closed per time period (week, month, year...whatever
fits their current PR best). Of course, that does ignore the number of
airports that are opened. They aren't talking "net".

It appears that the 2004 numbers don't really match up with "2 airports a
month", but it's easy to see how they translated the 2003 numbers to that.

Anyway, it's just marketing. Even the numbers you post don't tell the whole
story, since they don't address questions such as runway length, proximity
to the urban area served, facilities at the airport, etc. You could open 10
unattended 2000' runways, and still not compensate for the loss of an
airport like Meigs, for example.

Pete