Aerodrome:type vs. aerodrome and big edit

General talk Tagging general discussion
1

Hello everybody,

we’ve been discussing in German whether it would fit better to replace aerodrome:type=* with aerodrome=* and if so, we would then make a big edit changing the keys.

Currently, there is a little more usage of aerodrome=international (550) than aerodrome:type=international (458).

Is anybody having comments or objections regarding the suggesions?

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2

I’m not a 100% clear what the tag change would imply, but I have a semantic
question. I was under the impression that the classification of aerodromes that is used in aerodrome:type is the classification introduced in the US by the FAA, and that there js no international equivalent. Am I right and, if so, would not the proposed change give a disproportionate importance to this classification?

3

I’m not aware of that FAA classification but my impression is that the current values fit airports in Europe very well.

4

not if you go into legal or regulatory details, unfortunately

5

I don’t think that we have to. If we want to, then we should indeed introduce a special tag like aerodrome:faa_class or something similar. The current values fit european airports as well. :slight_smile:

6

At least, let’s not forget that not all aerodromes are airports, and even that not all air strips are aerodromes. Applying an airport classification to aerodromes is like deciding if a mammal is a dalmatian, a bulldog, a terrier or a spaniel.

Aerodromes are usually classified according to abstruse aeronautical criteria, while airports are classified according to more commercial criteria. In France for instance, as far as I remember we tend to distinguish between passenger airports, cargo airports and industrial airports.

7

But is the current (de facto) scheme then wrongly tagged in your opinion?

8

I have two conflicting points of view:

  • as a mapper specialised in outdoors, I recently encountered a mountain air strip nearby a hiking route, I wanted to map it, and I found no understandable scheme that I could use. I then dug into lots of documentation (both local and international) and found that indeed the tagging scheme could definitely be improved.

  • I happen to be an aviation professional, but paradoxically that pushes me toward moderation. I know that aviation is incredibly complex and we should not go too far.

Pragmatically, maybe we could do something simple so as not to insult the future: separate airport-oriented tags and aerodrome-oriented tags. The consequences would be:

  • not perfect but acceptable if we end up with something like aerodrome=airstrip, which would be very similar to highway=path
  • flexible if aviation fanatics want to improve the aerodrome* tags, while aiport* tags stay simple for normal people who just want to know where the closest passenger airport is.
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9

then my suggestion would be to use a specific tag for it, like aerodrome:FAA=*

10

There exists an abandoned proposal for this topic:

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11

There exists an abandoned proposal for this topic:

I just updated the stats on the wiki-page