What our airport data can and cannot tell you

What is in the data

OurAirports is a community-maintained, public-domain database of the world’s airfields. We keep only the records it types as a large or medium airport, flags for scheduled passenger service and gives a three-letter IATA code: 3,244 airports in 233 countries, retrieved on 2026-10-18. Heliports, small airfields and closed airports are left out, because travellers cannot book a flight to them.^{[1–2] sources}

What “scheduled service” means — and does not

The scheduled-service flag says that an airport has had regular passenger flights. It is maintained by volunteers, so it can lag reality in both directions: an airport that lost its last route may still be flagged, and a newly served one may not be yet. It says nothing about which airlines fly there, to where, or how often.^{[1] source}

Large and medium are types, not traffic

“Large” and “medium” are OurAirports’ own airport types (1,151 and 2,093 in our data). They roughly follow the size of the facility, not passenger numbers, so two airports of the same type can be very different in how busy they are. We never rank airports by popularity or traffic, because the data does not measure either.^{[1–2] sources}

Locations and distances

Each airport has one reference point, usually near the runways. Every distance we show is the great-circle distance between such points, or between an airport and a city’s representative point — a geometric minimum, not road distance or travel time (how we calculate distances).^{[1] source}

• Use the nearby airport finder to list every airport in our data near a place.
• Use the flight distance calculator for the great-circle distance between two airports.

What the data cannot tell you

Some of the most important travel questions are outside what an airport dataset can answer. Where a guide does not show something, it is usually because we have no sourced data for it, not because it does not matter.

• Fares and availability — only a live search shows them (why prices change).
• Which airlines fly where, and how often.
• Terminals, opening hours and facilities.
• How to get from the airport into town, unless a guide cites an official source for it.
• How busy an airport is or how long queues are.

Using our guides well

Treat airport guides as the map and the live search as the timetable: the guide tells you which airports are realistic for a place and how far apart they are, and the search tells you what you can actually book. When a city has more than one airport, compare them before you search (how to choose between nearby airports). If you spot a mistake in an airport fact, tell us — we fix it and report it upstream to OurAirports where we can.