Airports as Creative Free Enterprise Centers: 

a new model for governance and growth 

by Aron Faegre 

faegre@onemain.com 

Aron Faegre & Associates 

520 SW Yamhill Street 

Portland, Oregon 97204 

November 10, 2003 (Draft) 

Freedom is one of our most important and basic American values. Thus it should be no 

surprise that the first successful powered aviation vehicle was created in our country, and 

that this new mode of transportation has been nurtured, grown, and matured here. This is 

because aviation, at its root, is about freedom. Flying is mans ability to have freedom in 

the third – vertical – dimension. After 10,000 years of mankind's wandering to and fro 

over the horizontal plane, American inventors Orville and Wilbur Wright, created the 

first successful "air-plane", that allowed us to begin exploring the freedom of this vertical 

plane – this "air-plane." 

And this airplane, using the term here to mean a machine, not a place, has revolutionized 

our world. For travel, no one would consider heading out on a 2000 mile hike to visit 

grandma. Yet people fly 2000 miles every day to go visit grandma. So it has allowed us 

to connect with people – more people – on shorter notice and with more regularity. 

Thinking back to the origins of our country, when Benjamin Franklin and John Adams 

and Thomas Jefferson were in France trying to drum up support and cash to fund an 

American revolution against England, they would be making solicitations, but were never 

sure whether a war had already been won or lost. It would often take a year or more to 

even find out whether they were negotiating the right treaty. With cell phones and the 

internet, the speed of the airplane has become the norm for all of our communications, 

personal and business. 
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In spite of the slow communication of the old days, the Revolutionary War was won – 

John Adams did get the Dutch to loan America more money and the ragtag American 

army won freedom from the Monarchy that was England. The origins of our nation rest 

on this kind of creative, entrepreneurial spirit. 

Two hundred twenty seven years after the Revolution, one hundred years after the 

invention of the airplane, we have a country with 5,300 public use airports and 14,000 

private use airports sprinkled from sea to sea, and 240,000 airplanes available to travel 

this 3-D freedom between airports. And we have a system of government – first the 

CAA, then the FAA – that has worked hard to promote and develop this great aviation 

system. 

But now – under that paradigm – the number of airports and aircraft has for the moment 

reached its peak. The number of airports, in fact, has been declining slightly year to year. 

Our aviation system appears to have reached a phase of initial maturity. It is an open and 

friendly system. Pretty much anyone over the age of 17, who is reasonably healthy, can 

train and become a pilot. 

A small two place aircraft can be rented at most airports for about the hourly rate that a 

union carpenter, plumber, or electrician gets paid. The number of airports is sufficient, 

and their spacing such, that even a small two place aircraft can wend its way to anywhere 

in the country, and can count on finding plenty of places with fuel and services. Our 

American aviation system is accessible, functional, and usable by all of the public. In 

this sense, it is quite a success. 

Do we rest on our laurels and congratulate ourselves on a "job well done?" Or do we ask 

"Who are the people who are attracted to the air-plane?" and "How can we grow this 

great invention to an even higher level of accomplishment?" In this essay, we argue for 

the latter. 
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Who are these people of the air-plane? They tend to be people who are attracted to this 

dream of flying – this freedom in the third dimension. They tend to be people who think 

creatively – inventors who are searching for new ways to accomplish things. They tend 

to be people who are strong individuals with leadership skills – when piloting in the airplane, unless it is a helicopter, one must have a good plan of action filled with 

contingencies. When things get tough it is not possible to just pull over to the side of the 

road and stop. The pilot must creatively imagine ahead the multiple variety of pathways 

that a 3-D flight might entail, including ones in unexpected winds, through flocks of 

birds, under thunderheads, or even through hail. 

This brings up the fact that there are people who do not like this air-plane idea. There are 

some who are so opposed, by nature, that they are terrified to even sit in a monstrous 

Boeing 747 or an Airbus. My mother-in-law is one of these. To her it seems unnatural 

that anything man-made should be up in the air. And human nature being what it is, she 

doesn't trust that the captain and crew are necessarily sober and sane. Given the 

September 11th use of aircraft as a kind of terrorist bomb, this mistrust of aviation 

certainly can be understood. For those of us in the other camp, September 11th

represented, rather, an almost unbelievable nightmare. How could this wonderful 

freedom be so cruelly misused? 

Many non-air-plane people are less extreme in their concerns, like my wife. She just 

thinks that these air-planes are noisy, smelly machines that can be put up with on 

occasion. But they are not things to be celebrated. If man had been meant to fly, he 

would have wings. But she would admit, begrudgingly, that airplanes sure are handy, 

when you want to go to Ireland for two weeks of hiking in the countryside. 

Where is this little essay going? Why is it titled " Airports as Creative Free Enterprise 

Centers: A new model for governance?" We have considered that airplanes and airports 

are new to human life. They give us a new freedom that some of us have longed for, and 

they have sped up our lives, and made our world smaller. But more importantly, they are 

attractors for the kind of people who love freedom, who think creatively, and are to some 
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extent natural leaders. And it is in this regard that as a society and culture, we might do 

well to look at airports with a new eye. 

Air-ports are the places where people who love the air-plane go to hang out. Of course 

"port" means door, so the air-port is the doorway to the vertical dimension – the air – and 

as such, a doorway to an exciting sense of freedom. Airports are places that can serve as 

much more than just a place to put an airplane. They should be looked at as places where 

creativity can be nurtured. They should be looked at as places where leadership skills can 

be learned and tested. They can be places where the old fashioned American "Yankee 

Spirit" can exist and thrive. 

The traditional model of governing airports has been to have them 100% owned by the 

government, and all activities controlled, to ensure that when a plane needs to take off 

there is fuel available. Originally, the governments owned the fuel tanks and the service 

station, to ensure that the system worked. Bit by bit, through the years, we now more 

often than not have service stations (fixed base operators – FBO's) that are privately 

owned. In Oregon we've progressed to allowing private enterprise card-lock self-serve 

fueling by the pilots themselves. 

In fact, private enterprise is now in control of these basics of aviation. The days of 

government controlled and/or funded scheduled airlines are gone. The private sector has 

taken over. At international airports today, no significant facility decision is made 

without the written approval of the major airlines serving that airport – i.e. the private 

sector. And in true American fashion, competition has worked wonders. If you plan 

ahead a little, you can visit grandma 2000 miles away for half the cost of driving there, 

and get there ten times as fast. The same is true for smaller aircraft and smaller airports. 

There is no longer a reason to protect or subsidize FBO's, training schools, or repair 

stations. The number of airports and available services is great and well established. 

There is no longer the slightest concern that a pilot could travel cross country and be 

hindered by lack of services. The private sector is in control. Private enterprise is 

working. 
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So what model of government is needed for airports today? Obviously, the runways and 

taxiways, the lights and navigation systems are used by all pilots, and thus are needed to 

be in public ownership and control. We are a nation that believes in the "rule of law." 

Control towers are good. They create order and safety. Standard airport traffic patterns 

and procedures are good. They create order and safety. But the supply of services, of 

hangars, and facilities – this can be left to private enterprise. The competitive spirit of 

business and private enterprise will invent the best ways that these can be accomplished. 

There are many added benefits of allowing private enterprise to become the standard 

provider of airport facilities and services. First, the ownership of land and buildings is a 

basic element of our normal American system. The traditional model for development is 

that banks finance facilities only when the land is also owned, and the bank is in first 

place should a default occur. And this is because the bank wants to be able to 

immediately find a new owner who can use the facility, and get it up and running again. 

Otherwise the bank is losing money. When a governmental agency owns the land, and a 

facility goes into default, there is no built-in need to get the facility up and running again, 

beyond a kind of communal goodness. Another piece of this puzzle is that when a person 

or company owns the land and facilities outright, they have a vested interest in making 

sure it keeps working. A person who owns a house and a garage either lives in it, and 

puts a car in the garage. Or they rent it out to someone who lives in it and has a car to put 

in the garage. No-one in their right mind just lets it sit. Private ownership of facilities on 

an airport functions with the same mentality, because it is in the self-interest of a private 

owner to do it that way. 

Surprisingly, it is in the public interest to do it this way as well! When private 

development occurs, it is taxed in order to fund the basic police, fire, and other essential 

services that are needed by all. When government development occurs, those same 

police, fire, and other essential services must be provided, but without the benefit of 

added tax revenues. Thus, the other private development – homeowners and businesses – 

must shoulder the burden of the governmental development. This is fine, as long as it is 
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essential development that the private sector cannot provide. But where it is development 

that the private sector can provide, it would be fairer to use the standard model. 

There is an even stronger reason to go to a more deliberate public-private partnership at 

airports than the common sense "developer-minded" ones, or the advantages to the public 

in increased taxes. Airports have reached their limit in growth as basic "hangar" sites. 

The number of aircraft has more or less leveled off. The number of airports is starting to 

decline. So it is time for a revolution in use, at airports. 

Airports have always been centers of creative activity. It is now time to free them up to 

function in this way to a much higher extent. Airports must be freed up to become 

centers of creative enterprise. Where an airport has available surrounding lands that are 

compatible with airplanes, they can be used as an expansion area to allow for the basic 

airport to become a center for creative enterprise, including expanded employment and 

job creation. 

Aviation is still a new field. Though often considered as environmentally unfriendly due 

to the noise, aircraft are essential in our current efforts at environmental protection and 

enhancement. The use of aircraft as platforms for high-tech sensors to map and 

understand our earth is opening up whole new fields of business and research to promote 

the protection of our environment. Aircraft allow us to finally "see" the whole of our 

land. New business and research is also opening up on the designing of new kinds of 

aircraft, new ways of manufacturing parts, new materials for construction, new kinds of 

propulsion systems, quieting technology, special security systems, weather and climate 

analysis equipment, advanced integrated electronic flight systems ... the list of new areas 

of work in the air-plane (place not machine) is staggering. And it will only grow with 

time. 

Airports were historically sited outside of cities, or at their edge. This allowed plenty of 

open space for the approaches and departures of aircraft, during which they are low to the 

ground. Having airports outside of a city also promotes noise compatibility and safety, as 
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it can keep the low flying aircraft more generally away from people. Adjacent areas 

typically considered compatible include farm or forest lands, industrial lands (since 

people don't sleep there), and open water bodies. Yet, when we look at the kinds of 

businesses, jobs, and research that airports can foster, we see that the airport itself should 

be considered a kind of miniature city in its own right. 

In Oregon we try to keep cities and rural areas distinctly separated, in order to protect our 

natural resource areas. We have laws that require that urban uses stay in cities, and only 

be allowed in rural areas by special permission. To allow airports to develop as we are 

considering, our land use laws must be changed to automatically consider airports as 

special exceptions to this overall goal. Airports should be given an "employment" type 

zone that outright allows it to have this wide variety of commercial and industrial uses. 

And as there are a certain class of people who use their aircraft the same way that others 

use their cars, airport residential areas (for which a house has a hangar attached) should 

also be allowed outright. 

Airports should be thought of as a kind of "mixed use" zone, which are similar to those of 

an urban area, except that there is one governing proviso: any use must be "airport 

related" or "airport dependent." This concept would be formed similarly to how "water 

related" or "water dependent" rules were created to allow development along rivers and 

lakes, while preventing development which is not related or dependent. Oregon has the 

beginning of a rule like this called the "airport protection act," but to function as we are 

proposing, it must be enacted into law (there is no time limit for making it apply at any 

particular airport), and it must be amended to include an exception to State Goals 14 and 

11 (urban uses and services), so that it becomes usable as a practical matter when the 

airport is located outside of the city limits. 

Most airports are still being governed under an old model that views them as places that 

must be highly regulated and controlled, not just for safety, but for ensuring the providing 

of services. This kind of governance is obsolete. It misses out on the power and strength 

of the private sector, and the essential need for freedom inherent in creative enterprises. 
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It often results in a reverse resultant – a dampening of the providing of public facilities or 

services, since governments are generally fiscally weak. Across the nation, for many 

years, there has been a tax revolt of sorts, and most airports under governmental 

ownership just don't have any funds to build facilities. They barely have adequate funds 

to manage the airport, and the manager is often overworked to the point that they barely 

have time to even help the private sector initiate projects. 

Under this new model, aviation development will create new facilities and jobs, and these 

will in turn create additional property, income, and sales taxes. It will allow airports to 

be more capable of becoming self sufficient, as it will diversify the kinds of income 

resulting from the airport. A totally government controlled operation has no easy way to 

become self sufficient in this way. 

Aviation is a field that by its fundamental nature needs freedom, to be able to continue to 

grow. Airports are already becoming desired places for setting up new creative business 

enterprises, in spite of the difficulties of the old model of governance. When we look at 

the airports that are showing the strongest growth and development, it is those that have 

found ways to develop strong private-public partnerships. Let's not look at this as an 

anomaly, but rather as the new economic model for the future. 

In conclusion, this paper suggests that our airports can quickly become new creative free 

enterprise centers by: 

☼ understanding the history of airplanes, airports, and aviation, 

☼ recognizing the vast new transportation and technology advances that have 

evolved around aviation, which now are so important in serving our society and 

the larger global environment, 

☼ recognizing that airports are a particularly appropriate place to encourage further 

research, development, and use of these advances, 
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☼ adopting a vision for how these new aviation related fields can be combined to 

create a synergy at an airport that in turn becomes a new economic development 

engine for the larger community that the airport serves, 

☼ giving airports land use zones that outright allow airport related and dependent 

uses, 

☼ providing Goal 14 and 11 exceptions to rural airports, so that they can outright 

have these same basic airport related and dependent uses, and 

☼ promoting a governance structure that supports private enterprise as the active 

partner in the creation of these facilities. 

What would be the next step in working toward these goals? It is recommended that a 

group be assembled, of business, citizen, and governmental representatives interested in 

furthering this concept. This group would be charged with developing the framework 

and tasks necessary to accomplish these goals. In doing so, analysis of airports that are 

already functioning (at least in part) in meeting these goals, can be used as case studies to 

better understand the nature of this new creative free enterprise center, and how best to let 

it grow.