This topic may have come up in the ‘Meigs Field’ discussion of many moons ago, but my curosity was piqued when I came across this site: Abandoned and Little Known Airfields
It seems that the number of general aviation fields is trending downward, with few or no replacements - in my area during my lifetime Flushing Airport and Zahn’s Airport closed (others too, such as Meigs, but those two I have actually seen).
So is general aviation on the outs? (I remember a crisis in private plane manufacturer sometime during the 1980s)
Are any new GA airfields being created (in the past decade or so).
How is GA holding up in other portions of the world?
Here in VA, a new GA airfield was opened very near my parents’ house in Stafford County within the past year. It is designed to get the GA traffic out of Dulles and National airspace.
When I was the Planning Director in a locality we had a GA field and would have loved to close it - it was a genuine pain in the ass and a money-sucking piece of infrastructure. We approached the FAA about closing it but they leaned on us (the County was on the hook for several grants for improvements) to keep it open. I urged the BOS to pay the electric bill to keep the runway lights on and leave it at that, but it continues to suck money from local coffers.