Airport lookup: runways, frequencies & facility data
Every landing facility in the US — 47,000 of them, from O'Hare down to private grass strips — carries a public facility record: runways with lengths and surfaces, radio frequencies, elevation, the manager's actual phone number. It's the data behind every airport diagram you've ever used.
Here's what's in an airport record, and the searches that make the dataset genuinely useful — including finding fields by runway length.
What an airport record holds
- Identifiers — ICAO (KMDW), IATA (MDW), and local codes, all searchable
- Every runway: length, width, surface, lighting, headings, and elevations per end
- Location, elevation, and sunrise/sunset with civil twilight
- Manager and owner, with phone numbers — the ramp-question shortcut nobody expects to find
- Type and service level, from large hub to private strip
Searches worth knowing
Codes and names work as you'd expect — KMDW, Midway, “Chicago IL” all land. The power move is runway-length search: “IL >5000” returns every Illinois field with at least 5,000 feet of pavement, largest first. Ferry pilots sizing alternates, jet operators checking a diversion, event planners scouting fields — it's one query.
Airport records also cross-link the rest of AvDB: an aircraft's last known position resolves to its nearest airport, accident reports compute the nearest field to the site, and airmen sort by distance from any ident you name.
For planning, use current official sources
The honest caveat: facility data changes, and flight planning demands current official publications — NOTAMs, the Chart Supplement, your EFB. AvDB's airport records are for research, context, and ground truth at reference speed, not a substitute for preflight information sources.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find an airport's runway length?+
Search the airport's code or name in AvDB — every runway shows length, width, surface, and lighting on a card, with the longest runway called out on the summary.
Can I search airports by runway length?+
Yes — “IL >5000” style queries return every field in a state above a runway-length threshold, sorted with the largest first. Bare numbers work too.
Does AvDB cover small private strips?+
The facility file covers ~47,000 US landing facilities including private fields — if it has an identifier, it's searchable.
Run it in AvDB
The whole federal record, one search box
Every lookup in this guide is a single search in AvDB — free to download, with free searches every month.