Given Belfast has a relatively small population but has two airports, are there any other small cities/towns (i.e. less than 750,000 people) that are served by more than one airport?

Zurich might fit the bill. ZRH being the large airport, and the former military base Dübendorf which serves some private, rescue and business aviation.

While the city of Zurich has just 400'000 inhabitants, when including neighbouring communities, Zurich would clock in at about 1.3 million people, though.

David

St Maarten - pop 33K - Princess Juliana and Grand Case

Cleveland has 2 airports with scheduled service. Obviously CLE gets most of the activity, but BKL has scheduled service on Ultimate Jet Dornier 328J's to CVG 5 days per week.

Tampa has TPA and PIE within miles of each other, and SRQ is arguably also part of the same urban region. Probably the smallest of the "big"/large hub air service markets.

In Lienchiang County of Matsu Island, it have two airports on two islands and the population is only 12k. Does this count?

again by city do you mean metro or city population, big difference

The Hampton Roads area of Virginia - it is a metroplex type area has a population of 1.6 million and two airports - ORF and PHF

Narvik in northern Norway (pop. 18,756) has two airports, Evenes (EVE) and Framnes (NVK).

So has Reykjavík (pop. 123,246), KEF and RKV.

Not sure what your benchmark is - scheduled services at both? If not, some European cities I can think of:

Copenhague: Kastrup and Roskilde.
Lyon: Satolas and Bron
Toulouse: Blagnac and Lasbordes
Palma: Son San Juan and Son Bonet
Frankfurt: Rhein Main and Egelsbach

(until recently) Gothenburg: Landvetter and Save
(until recently): Bristol: Lulsgate and Filton

The only airport pair with scheduled flights at both is, however, Copenhague (Gothenburg and Bristol (sort of) would have qualified as well.

There are, of course, some more where airports far away have been named after a larger city with its own airport (e.g. DUS-NRN, FRA-HHN) for marketing purposes but I suppose we are not looking for those.

Breathe wrote:

Given Belfast has a relatively small population but has two airports, are there any other small cities/towns (i.e. less than 750,000 people) that are served by more than one airport?

I don't know of another comparable to Belfast. To have that much service at both and a population like that is very odd.

Reykjavik - KEF and RKV

NOU and GEA

I immediately think of ATW and GRB in Wisconsin, two airports less than 35 road miles apart serving relatively small communities.

Going larger but still not what I'd call really big cities, there is CMH and LCK both serving Columbus, MCO and SFB both serving Orlando.

Georgetown, Guyana

Eilat, Israel

ETH and VDA

Punta Gorda airport and RSW are only 35 miles apart driving distance. Charlotte County where Punta Gorda is has 175,000 people while Lee County where RSW is has about 750,000 people. So less than 1 million and two commercial airports.

Paramaribo, Suriname

~250K inhabitants and served by PBM and ORG

Fort Wayne, IN, has 250,000 population (about 400,000 MSA), and is served by 2 airports: Fort Wayne International (FWA) for airline service (G4, AA, UA, DL) and Smith Field (SMD) for GA aircraft.

SmithAir747

flyingturtle wrote:

Zurich might fit the bill. ZRH being the large airport, and the former military base Dübendorf which serves some private, rescue and business aviation.

While the city of Zurich has just 400'000 inhabitants, when including neighbouring communities, Zurich would clock in at about 1.3 million people, though.

David

While I'd like to think this is the case, I disagree with you. Dübendorf is a former military airport with limited service (e.g. rescue helicopters). There is continuous talk about moving general aviation to Dübendorf, but as of this day there has no decision been made.

I think it would be capable of doing that, considering it is regularly used as a parking lot for business jets during the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Northern Ireland is small enough that it makes more sense to look at these airports as both serving the country (1.8-1.9 million), rather than just the fraction of the country defined as Belfast city or metro. A couple points of comparison...

Hawaii (the big island) has slightly more land area, about 10% of the population of Northern Ireland, and scheduled service at both ITO and KOA.

The cities of the Salt Lake-Provo-Orem combined statistical area are comparable in population and land area (although the CSA includes a lot more empty land, too) to Northern Ireland, and have scheduled service at SLC, PVU, OGD, and LGU. Plus pretty regular charter service to ENV.

I don't know if it counts as a small city, but Detroit has both Detroit Metro Wayne County and Windsor. I know Windsor is across the border in Canada, but in fact it's closer to the center of Detroit than Wayne County so I consider it a Detroit airport.

In Europe I can think of Venice having both Marco Polo and Treviso. The city of Venice, although very famous, isn't really that big. Treviso isn't officially a Venice airport, but LCCs like Ryanair market it as Venice Treviso.

If we include small GA airfields there's quite a bit more. Turin for example has Caselle, the commercial airport, and Aeritalia, the GA airfield.

Hampton Roads - Virginia - Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Newport News - is a metroplex of about 1.6 million people with two airports, PHF and ORF



Edit: oops senior moment.

Does Warsaw count as a small city? It has both Frederic Chopin airport and Modlin airport.

Wellington, NZ sort of has two airports the main WLG but also PPQ airport is 50km (32 miles) to the north of the CBD even though PPQ serves the small costal area of Kapiti Coast. PPQ does get Air New Zealand to Auckland and Sounds air to Nelson, so it is a commercial airport.

The Wellington region has a population of around 500,000.

ZKOXA

vfw614 wrote:

Not sure what your benchmark is - scheduled services at both? If not, some European cities I can think of:

Copenhague: Kastrup and Roskilde.
Lyon: Satolas and Bron
Toulouse: Blagnac and Lasbordes
Palma: Son San Juan and Son Bonet
Frankfurt: Rhein Main and Egelsbach

(until recently) Gothenburg: Landvetter and Save
(until recently): Bristol: Lulsgate and Filton

The only airport pair with scheduled flights at both is, however, Copenhague (Gothenburg and Bristol (sort of) would have qualified as well.

There are, of course, some more where airports far away have been named after a larger city with its own airport (e.g. DUS-NRN, FRA-HHN) for marketing purposes but I suppose we are not looking for those.

Copenhague? You dont mean Copenhagen?

I can think of Georgetown, Guyana:
GEO - Cheddi Jagan International (was Timehri International)
OGL - Eugene F. Correira International (was Ogle)

How about a small country like St Lucia:
UVF - Hewanorra International
SLU - George F. L. Charles (was Castries)

And Dominica:
DOM - Douglas–Charles (was Melville Hall)
DCF - Canefield

Pittsburgh w/ PIT and LBE

The big island of Hawaii. Hilo and Kona. Only 186,000 people on the entire island.

Tenerife?

phxsanslcpdx wrote:

Northern Ireland is small enough that it makes more sense to look at these airports as both serving the country (1.8-1.9 million), rather than just the fraction of the country defined as Belfast city or metro. A couple points of comparison...

Hawaii (the big island) has slightly more land area, about 10% of the population of Northern Ireland, and scheduled service at both ITO and KOA.

The cities of the Salt Lake-Provo-Orem combined statistical area are comparable in population and land area (although the CSA includes a lot more empty land, too) to Northern Ireland, and have scheduled service at SLC, PVU, OGD, and LGU. Plus pretty regular charter service to ENV.

I'd agree with this statement, I live in Belfast and general rule of thumb is bhd is used as a business commuter airport as its literally 2 minutes to the cut centre, a lot like lcy, whereas bfs is used as a bucket and spade holiday airport and for LCC to the mainland and continental Europe for all of the north of Ireland. Any long haul to Asia and USA drives an hour and a half down the motorway to DUB.

Population in the region isn't big enough to sustain much more and I've no idea how the Norwegian operation will succeed but as a local living 20 minutes from both I've my fingers crossed, especially if it brings more tourists to one of the smallest, coolest places in europe!

JHM and OGG are 16 miles apart as the crow flies and the population of Maui is just shy of 155,000.

OP asks for small towns or cities, and people keep schlepping in cities with metros of several millions like Warsaw, Copenhagen, Cincinnati....incredible...

Breathe wrote:

Given Belfast has a relatively small population but has two airports, are there any other small cities/towns (i.e. less than 750,000 people) that are served by more than one airport?

There a few people here who perhaps should read the question again. When Breathe defined small city as less than 750,000, why suggest cities that have 3-4 million inhabitants or more? It's not always easy to count city population (with or without suburbs? Where do you draw the line?), but there are many cities suggested that have a lot more than 750,000 inhabitants, no matter how you count it.

And if you are looking at official city borders only, you might miss the bigger picture. Otherwise, City of London might be the best example on the list, with a population of about 8,000 and served by a number of airports. (But then you have to ignore that it's surrounded by Greater London with about 8.5 million more inhabitants, plus additional suburbs in Kent, Surrey, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex.)

SmithAir747 wrote:

Fort Wayne, IN, has 250,000 population (about 400,000 MSA), and is served by 2 airports: Fort Wayne International (FWA) for airline service (G4, AA, UA, DL) and Smith Field (SMD) for GA aircraft.

SmithAir747

Also in FWA's catchment area: Warsaw (ASW), population 14,280 and home to bizjets for Zimmer Biomet, Johnson & Johnson (DePuy Synthes Joint Reconstruction division), and Medtronic (spine and biologics division). All three have major manufacturing and R&D presences in Warsaw where people commute from far away to make artificial knees.

Breathe wrote:

Given Belfast has a relatively small population but has two airports, are there any other small cities/towns (i.e. less than 750,000 people) that are served by more than one airport?

A ton, especially here in the U.S. and once you start looking at cities that have distinct primary airports for GA vs. scheduled commercial.

For example, FAT also has FCH and E79 while SMF also has SAC and so on...

Since others have brought it up, there are also many communities where one airport is within say ten miles of the next airport, often because one airport is run by the county, and the adjacent airport is private access or run by the city. Examples: DVO, O69 and CA35 are all within a few miles of each other. 0Q3 and 0Q9 are within two miles of each other.

There's even an international variant of this setup, for example MXL, CXL and IPL are like 15 miles apart from each other, even though most people on the US side will use PSP as opposed to MXL. Or less extreme but very valid as someone else has mentioned SXM and SFG.

Just about every city and town in America has a host of small GA airports. If we include them all this will be a very long thread. If it doesn't have commercial service it's not really relevant.

Somebody stole Windhoek with WDH and ERS from under my nose... but then there is also Belize City with BZE and TZA and Belize city has only 373000 inhabitants

ua900 wrote:

Breathe wrote:

Given Belfast has a relatively small population but has two airports, are there any other small cities/towns (i.e. less than 750,000 people) that are served by more than one airport?

For example, FAT also has FCH and E79 while SMF also has SAC and so on...

Sacramento doesn't really count here; while the City population is around 500K, the metropolitan population is 2.4 million. However for the record, it has three commercial airports (SMF, MHR, MCC) plus SAC (G.A. since 1967 when airlines moved to the new SMF), plus additional G.A. strips in the region. I think this thread needs to consider metro areas, not just the population inside the official city limits.

Other markets depend on how broadly one considers their region. As mentioned above, St. Lucia's two airports are not that far apart as the crow flies, but having driven through the jungle on a terrrible road between Vigie and Hewanorra, I would personally consider them as different markets. As said, some examples are a commercial airport paired with a G.A. airport, which I don't think is what the O.P. was going for.

I think that Belfast is one of the few examples of a city surprisingly having two different airline-served airports for its size. L.A., S.F., NYC, London, Paris, Saõ Paulo, Tokyo, Buenos Aires... not so much.

Steamboat Springs, Colorado used to be served by two airports, SBS and HDN (Hayden, Yampa Valley). Once larger airlines started flying in for the ski season, the mainliners had to go to HDN while the expresses could still fit at SBS. Now it appears all commercial goes to HDN. (So there went my great contribution out the window.)

It's a long time ago (1970's), but Piedmont used to fly to both Smith- Reynolds airport in Winston Salem and Greensboro airport. They're only about 20 miles away from each other. Even today, the metro area population is about 750k (must have been a lot less back then)

http://www.departedflights.com/PI121578p12.html

Duluth MN (Population 86,000) has two airports within city limits. KDLH (Duluth International) and KDYT (Duluth Sky Harbor) .

For scheduled services, how about Savannah-Hilton Head International Airport (SAV) and Hilton Head Airport (HHI)?

Another Israeli city - Tel Aviv with Ben Gurion Airport and Sde Dov Airport.

City population of Tel Aviv is 432,900 (2015), though with a metro population (called Gusch Dan) of ca. 4m

Not sure if this qualifies, but seeing others, why not.
Friday Harbor ,Washington with scheduled service to Seattle's Boeing Field and also the float plane base with scheduled service to Lake Union, all by Kenmore Air.
City is <5,000, so seems a decent candidate.

Wingtips56 wrote:

ua900 wrote:

Breathe wrote:

Given Belfast has a relatively small population but has two airports, are there any other small cities/towns (i.e. less than 750,000 people) that are served by more than one airport?

For example, FAT also has FCH and E79 while SMF also has SAC and so on...

Sacramento doesn't really count here; while the City population is around 500K, the metropolitan population is 2.4 million. However for the record, it has three commercial airports (SMF, MHR, MCC) plus SAC (G.A. since 1967 when airlines moved to the new SMF), plus additional G.A. strips in the region. I think this thread needs to consider metro areas, not just the population inside the official city limits.

Other markets depend on how broadly one considers their region. As mentioned above, St. Lucia's two airports are not that far apart as the crow flies, but having driven through the jungle on a terrrible road between Vigie and Hewanorra, I would personally consider them as different markets. As said, some examples are a commercial airport paired with a G.A. airport, which I don't think is what the O.P. was going for.

I think that Belfast is one of the few examples of a city surprisingly having two different airline-served airports for its size. L.A., S.F., NYC, London, Paris, Saõ Paulo, Tokyo, Buenos Aires... not so much.

Steamboat Springs, Colorado used to be served by two airports, SBS and HDN (Hayden, Yampa Valley). Once larger airlines started flying in for the ski season, the mainliners had to go to HDN while the expresses could still fit at SBS. Now it appears all commercial goes to HDN. (So there went my great contribution out the window.)

I read the OPs condition as two airports vs two "commercial" airports and city / town vs metro area / region because otherwise you'd get into too many definition issues. For example, would ONT or SNA be considered LA or STS be considered SF? Where does a place like PSP fall, still LA? How about BFI, does this fall under SEA, YVR, both or standalone? What about IGR and IGU or MMX and CPH or MHH and TCB?

I don't personally think that a city of 750k qualifies as a "small city / town" but since that's the OP's definition for the purpose of this thread so be it. Same for two airports, I don't personally consider SMF and SAC to be peers but they are certainly both airports that serve Sacramento. If we consider region then PSP as in Coachella Valley probably exceeds the limit of 750k as well, at least in the winter and PSP proper has fewer than 50k residents.

My FIRST POST !....Bucharest Aurel Vlaicu Airport / Romania (BBU/LRBS) & Bucharest Henri Coanda International Airport / Romania (OTP/LROP)...!!!

gioannis13 wrote:

My FIRST POST !....Bucharest Aurel Vlaicu Airport / Romania (BBU/LRBS) & Bucharest Henri Coanda International Airport / Romania (OTP/LROP)...!!!

But Aurel Vlaicu doesn't have any commercial airline service anymore. There used to be in the past, but several years ago it all moved to Henri Coanda. Now Aurel Vlaicu is a GA airport only.

According to Wikipedia Venice has a population of 264.579 inhabitants and like I mentioned before it has two commercial airports. But Venice draws a lot of tourists so that's no surprise. But I think it still counts as a winner so far.

This is perhaps stretching the definition a bit, but the twin cities of Sault Sainte Marie (Michigan and Ontario) have maybe 100,000 people combined and are served by airports on each side of the border (CIU in the US, YAM in Canada). However, they surely would not have two airports if they were both in the same country.