How should abandoned airports be mapped?

Help and support Tagging help & support
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I recently added the runway for the abandoned Usibelli airstrip in Alaska, but I wasn’t sure the best way to map it. The aeroway=runway tag can take the “abandoned” lifecycle prefix, but the aeroway=aerodrome wiki page doesn’t mention it. Given it’s absence, I wasn’t sure whether it was permitted. Abandoned runways don’t seem to show up on most map layers either. I found one previous thread on the topic, but it wasn’t particularly detailed.

If all traces of the airport are missing, then of course it shouldn’t be on OSM, but there are plenty of remote airports that were never redeveloped and remain undisturbed.

As to whether this is sufficient interest to necessitate specific best practices on what may be seen as a niche subject subject, I will note that there are multiple works devoted to it, including the excellent reference called Abandoned & Little Known Airfields that attempts to catalog them, a European site inspired by it, a website for World War II German airports, a British version, the Airfields of Britain Conservation Trust, the Airfields Research Group, the now-archived Pacific War Airfields Project and the Forgotten Fields series of books by Lou Thole.

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it is permitted

in general wiki is not listing all tagging possibilities, though I guess this specific one would be reasonable to mention (feel free to edit Wiki!)

yes, though it should not be reason to map noneoperational objects as operational

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You can add the abandoned lifecycle prefix to pretty much any tag if it makes sense to do so, i.e. if there are some remains of the feature but it is no longer in use. It doesn’t have to be explicitly mentioned on the wiki page.
If there are other remains of the airstrip left, aside from the runway, e.g. buildings, aircraft shelters, service equipment, etc… it’s probably fine to tag it like that.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:aeroway%3Dairstrip might be more appropriate than aeroway=aerodrome? If it really is that small and there are no other recognizable features left aside from the runway, just tagging the abandoned runway might be better.

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I agree that they shouldn’t be tagged as operational, but it still seems like they should appear in some way though as they are still visible.

Thanks, I was not aware of that tag and it seems very useful for situations such as these.

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There is one: not operational does NOT mean not used. And non official means at higher risk.

Very interesting for search and rescue.

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Wonder if disused: may be a better option then abandoned?

A number of ex-WW2 airstrips that I’ve seen in the Australian Outback are still as they were built - a strip of graded, compacted, gravel (except now they have a few weeds / bushes growing out of them!)

Usable for light planes (they were usually originally fighter bases), as long as the pilot accepts “higher risk”

Definitely usable for helicopters!

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As the Runway still exists you may use abandoned / disused = yes.

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I agree, but that’s not I meant.

I was thinking about airports/airstrips that lost their permit due to bad maintenance.

Some of them are still in use, and aircraft accidents occur more often near those fields.

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Airports needs the facilities to handle planes and a “license”. I would think we are talking about the situation that there is no “license” but the facilities are maintained enough.

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I’ve moved this into “tagging help and support” because it’s (a) fairly recently active and (b) essentially a tagging question.

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