When a new owner engages in base decisions, any number of factors come into play. The list will most likely include convenience, services, cost, and personality. It's rather curious, though, that the hierarchy of priorities tends to vary with the species of owner/pilot.
The businessperson with a new twin-engine airplane will probably put convenience first. Cost is more than likely subordinate to convenience because "time is money."
On the other hand, the new owner of a used single-engine, fixed-gear, four-seater, who has a family of four and a mortgage to pay, may consider basing the airplane in the next state if it means saving $20 a year in maintenance and fuel costs.
The builder who incessantly tinkers with homebrew wings will opt for a spot with more than the usual creature comforts, such as restrooms, running water, heat, electricity to power tools, and a nearby cafe. Such accommodations definitely need not be of Hyatt caliber, but the craftsman will require more than a simple point of takeoff and landing to be happy. After all, such grassroots aviators who'd rather build it than buy it will spend more time at the airport than at home. If the airport has a grass strip, an Experimental Aircraft Association chapter, and is at least three counties away from the nearest Class B, C, D, or E airspace, so much the better.
See? Choosing a home for an airplane can be an endeavor requiring some serious inner reflection.
For those of us who live out in the boonies, the choices are limited. If only one strip exists in one hundred square country miles, then you take what you can get. Take Granby, Colorado, for example.
Granby "Municipal" is up the road from Winter Park Ski Area, just over the divide from Boulder, and less than half an hour from some of the planet's most spectacular scenery. If you happen to live near this metropolis of less than 5,000, your airplane's home base is an east-west "paved" runway with enough humps and bumps to qualify as a dirt-bike course. The ops hut is exactly that - a hut, with one pay phone, no attendants, no heat, and, yes, a Port-A-Potty standing vigil out front. Do-it-yourself fuel and tie-downs are standard. To the dozen or so locals who call it home, though, it is paradise.
For those flying machine owners who do have choices, close scrutiny of the options is essential.
Convenience: The first-time owner will soon realize that acquiring an aircraft casts a mysterious spell that will, at unforeseen times and places, lure him to the airport for no apparent reason.
Up early on a Sunday morning before the rest of the brood? You'll somehow be compelled to drop by the airport, "just to make sure everything's okay." To contend with this neurosis, you'll want to be able to sneak over there and back quickly enough that the gang at home won't miss you. If the airport is 48 miles away, you'll find it almost impossible to make the round trip before 10 a.m. Sunday School.
Proximity is important, of course, especially if you fly frequently. It's just not very convenient or pleasant to have to drive a long way to get to your airplane.
Don't care to pull your airplane out of its hangar before you can fly or to push it into its tie-down spot after landing? Larger airports with full-service FBOs often will retrieve your airplane and have it fueled and ready on the ramp prior to your flight, and tuck it away when you return.
Services: What's important to you? Make a list. If you live downwind of Lake Michigan, you'll probably want an airport with at least one instrument approach, and if low scud days seem to be the norm, you'll want several different approaches (and an instrument rating, if you don't have one already).
Do you get the urge to fly at all hours of the day and night? Maybe the bigger airport a bit further away, with its 24-hour FBO and airport lighting systems, is the right home for your airplane. Can't stand the thought of leaving your pride and joy out in the cold? Then an aerodrome that has hangar space available will be your first choice. A little spooked in crosswind landings? Well, uh, that reliever or air carrier airport with the control tower, mile-wide runways, and emergency equipment might suit your needs.
Those big runways are well-lit at night, too. If you plan on making a lot of business trips and arriving after dark, consider the safety factor at larger airports of having the maximum level of ATC service and airport lighting and navaids available to you. Larger airports also have 24-hour security.
On-field maintenance and avionics shops are a plus, especially for unscheduled maintenance problems. If your airplane breaks, for example, it can be a logistical nightmare to get it fixed if the airport doesn't have a shop on the field. Plan on doing as much of your own maintenance as the regs allow? Make sure you choose an airport base that allows it - some don't permit any work to be performed on the ramp or even in individual hangars.
A nice service to have at home base is a self-fueling facility. The price of the fuel is typically cheaper because you have no attendants to pay and no trucks to maintain. A pilot's supply shop that sells charts and other necessities also is a plus.
Cost: This item prompts many of us to compromise on the other items on our airport wish list. Unless they've just won the "PowerBall" lottery, typical aircraft owners need to think about the financial tab and amend the other preferences.
For example, assume you're moving to the Chicago area with your Cessna 182. Where are you going to park it? Chicago O'Hare has 24-hour service, every instrument approach known to aviation, and a great restaurant at the Hilton. But Signature, the only FBO on the field, says they have no resident airplanes, just transients.
The closest airport to your northside condo is Palwaukee, the general aviation version of O'Hare - crowded and hyper-active. You've heard that a 94th Aero Squadron restaurant is located right there off the runway. Cool! This is it!
Checking in with the FBOs, you discover that fuel costs $2.52 per gallon, maintenance on a piston single is pegged at $56 per hour, and to share a heated hangar with an assortment of singles and twins costs $505 a month. If you don't mind preflighting in stifling August heat and smog or clawing through January ice, you can get a tiedown for a tidy $130 a month.
About an hour's drive to the west is a fine general aviation roost - DuPage Airport. Not a bad place to call home, and it's right next door to a superb resort called Pheasant Run. Somewhat more isolated from the chaos of Chicago's Class B Airspace, the place features a large assortment of runways and a good selection of instrument approaches. An unheated hangar will run $234 or, if you want an electric door opener, plan on $344 a month. Fuel is $1.89 a gallon with the locals' discount, and one of the bigger shops will care for your machine at a rate of $50 per hour.
If the resort thing isn't that important, you'll discover Chicago/Schaumburg if you look about 10 miles to the east. This little jewel of an airfield features a recently lengthened east/west runway and a new terminal building with cafe. It can be home to your 182 for a $200 monthly hangar fee or $70 for rope space. Gas is $2.17 a gallon and maintenance can be had for $41 an hour.
Make the compromises. Make the choices.
Personality: To this owner, given hangar availability, ambiance is at the top of the list. I'll drive the extra 20 minutes, fly to a distant maintenance facility and Greyhound it back, and pay the extra 20 cents a gallon if an airport feels good.
Until the old gals who operated the Airport Cafe at Wisconsin's Richland Center Airport - which is tucked among the bluffs and rolling farmland of the Badger State - gave it up, that was the place. If heaven has an airport, it would look a lot like Richland Center.
Now sporting a runway with real concrete, for years the field was grass. I can remember the aroma of coffee and bacon on Sunday mornings, mixed with the scent of clover, that wafted to the tiedown area to greet drivers of Cessnas, Aeroncas, Mooneys, and Stearmans.
Every blade of grass seemed hand-manicured. Green. Everything was pure, lush, and emerald green. The people who flew and hung out there could have been taken from the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. If you have flown through Americana for any length of time, you know the kind of place. Amana, Iowa - same feeling. Beloit, Wisconsin - when John and Ruth converted their farm and transformed the barn into the FBO office - ditto.
To others, the smell of the kerosene, the whine of the Pratts, and the chatter on the tower frequency is the turn-on.
Whatever.
The point is this. First-time owners get a brand new status along with their aircraft. No longer are they simply an hourly customer at an airport, but a resident. Thus, selecting an airport is not unlike choosing a place to live - a place that might be no more than a house made of wood or bricks, just a structure, an amenity.
Or, given the right inhabitants and spirit, that piece of real estate could be a warm environment that revitalizes, nurtures, and protects. For those who look at flying as a personal expression rather than merely transportation, an airport has the potential to be much more than a public works project. It can truly be - a home.
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