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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