Page 209 - Planning and Design of Airports

174 Airp o r t D e sign

Advisory Circular 150/5300-13 “Airport Design” is the primary source
of most airfield design standards. Originally published in 1989, AC
150/5300-13 has been updated 15 times as of 2010. The reader is
encouraged to visit the FAA’s website for the latest updates to this and
any Advisory Circulars when performing airport planning and design
work, as they are updated often.

Airport Classification
For the purpose of stipulating geometric design standards for the
various types of airports and the functions which they serve, letter
and numerical codes and other descriptors have been adopted to
classify airports.
For design purposes, airports are classified based on the aircraft
they accommodate. While at any airport, a wide variety of aircraft,
from small general aviation piston-engine aircraft to heavy air trans-
port aircraft, will use the airfield, airports are designed based on a
series of “critical” or “design” aircraft. These aircraft are selected from
the fleet using the airport as those most critical to airfield design. The
FAA defines the term critical aircraft as the aircraft most demanding
on airport design that operates at least 500 annual itinerant opera-
tions at a given airport. In many cases, more than one critical aircraft
will be selected at an airport for design purposes. For example, it is
often the smallest aircraft that is critical to the orientation of runways,
while the largest aircraft determines most of the other dimensional
specifications of an airfield.
As described in Chap. 2, certain dimensional and performance
characteristics of the critical aircraft determine the airport’s airport
reference code. The airport reference code is a coding system used to
relate the airport design criteria to the operational and physical
characteristics of the aircraft intended to operate at the airport.
It is based upon the aircraft approach category and the airplane
design group to which the aircraft is assigned. The aircraft approach
category, as shown in Table 6-1, is determined by the aircraft
approach speed, which is defined as 1.3 times the stall speed in the
landing configuration of aircraft at maximum certified landing
weight [6].
The airplane design group (ADG) is a grouping of aircraft based
upon wingspan or tail height, as shown in Table 6-2. An airplane
design group for a particular aircraft is assigned based on the greater
(higher Roman numeral) of that associated with the aircraft’s wing-
span or tail height.
The airport reference code is a two designator code referring to
the aircraft approach category and the airplane design group for
which the airport has been designed. For example, an airport refer-
ence code of B-III is an airport designed to accommodate aircraft