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Among many other reasons, it's partly a question of scale. A quick Wikipedia check[1] shows Israel has 28 airports, the US has a few more than that, as of 2011

Among many other reasons, it's partly a question of scale. A quick Wikipedia check[1] shows Israel has 28 airports, the US has a few more than that, as of 2011 it was 19,782.[2] You just can't expect the same level of quality with the same policies with the difference in locations and passenger volume. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_airports http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_airports [2] http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_03.html http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...

dredmorbius 13y ago
You're grossly overstating the commercial aviation fields in the US. TSA applies to commercial aviation. Most of those US fields are general (civilian, private, noncommercial) aviation, and the overwhelming majority are little more than dirt strips (33.3% were paved as of 2006). For commercial transport, you want to look at the "certified" line of that table, which shows 547 fields. From the footnote: "Certificated airports serve air-carrier operations with aircraft seating more than 9 passengers. As of 2005, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) no longer certificates military airports." According to Wikipedia's list of US airports, sorted by enplanements (this is apparently a word), there are 87 airports with > 1 million enmplanements/year. At the low end, that's 2740 daily, or about 30 largish flights (100 seats each). CHS, Charleston International Airport (South Carolina) is the 87th on this list. Another 296 airports are listed with traffic ranging down to 1,124 passenger boardings/year. Of these, 201 have more than 100 boardings/day on average.
- pyre 13y ago
  > TSA applies to commercial aviation It hasn't been that way for a while. They have been expanding to things like sporting events, trains stations, etc.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    In the context of my comment: commercial as opposed to general aviation.

dredmorbius 13y ago

You're grossly overstating the commercial aviation fields in the US. TSA applies to commercial aviation. Most of those US fields are general (civilian, private, noncommercial) aviation, and the overwhelming majority are little more than dirt strips (33.3% were paved as of 2006). For commercial transport, you want to look at the "certified" line of that table, which shows 547 fields. From the footnote: "Certificated airports serve air-carrier operations with aircraft seating more than 9 passengers. As of 2005, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) no longer certificates military airports." According to Wikipedia's list of US airports, sorted by enplanements (this is apparently a word), there are 87 airports with > 1 million enmplanements/year. At the low end, that's 2740 daily, or about 30 largish flights (100 seats each). CHS, Charleston International Airport (South Carolina) is the 87th on this list. Another 296 airports are listed with traffic ranging down to 1,124 passenger boardings/year. Of these, 201 have more than 100 boardings/day on average.

pyre 13y ago
> TSA applies to commercial aviation It hasn't been that way for a while. They have been expanding to things like sporting events, trains stations, etc.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  In the context of my comment: commercial as opposed to general aviation.