Airfields - their Status in Europe and the UK

 

France manages 430 airfields of which some 39 are marked as Army, Navy or Air Force. At least 400 airfields are available for public civilian use. Some of the Air Force fields are dual use.

Germany has slightly more in total than France though with a higher proportion of military, the number of civil fields is probably about the same and well over ninety percent of them are in the former West Germany

The UK, including Northern Ireland, the Scottish Islands and the Channel Isles - with roughly the same population as France manages a meagre grand total of just 209 airfields of which no less than 51 are military. This means that we have little more than a third of the civil aerodromes that France provides for its roughly similar pilot population.

France has a greater land area than the UK but the distances from one end to the other are actually slightly greater for the British mainland so I doubt if GA is more important for getting about there than here.

Belgium manages 18 Civil fields (out of 32 total) and the Netherlands a mere 17 (out of 27) even Iceland has more airfields than the Dutch.

Italy has approximately half the airfields total of Britain, and Spain about one third.

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Data Extracted from:

Freeflight Aviation Atlas of Europe

Summarised by David Thomas