Branson Airport (place)

Branson Airport, (IATA:BKG, FAA: BBG) is an airport with commercial air service located 8 miles southeast of Branson, Missouri, and 40 miles south of Springfield, Missouri, in the southwestern part of the state, close to the Arkansas border. The Springfield-Branson area has around 450,000 people, and has another, larger airport, Springfield-Branson National Airport, located closer to Springfield. Branson Airport, which was opened in 2009, is currently served by one airline, Frontier Airlines, which offers seasonal service between the airport and Denver, Colorado.

And here is the interesting thing about the Branson Airport, because "second biggest airport in a small Metro that has seasonal flights to Denver" is not that interesting, I admit: Branson Airport is the only airport in the United States to be privately developed and operated. And it is one of two to be privately operated:

Of the 501 commercial service airports in the United States, private sector operators hold Part 139 airport operating certificates for only 2—Luis Munoz Marin, which is under a 40-year lease, and Branson Airport in Missouri, which was privately developed.

So of the 501 airports with regularly scheduled commercial service (as of 2014, when that document was released, the number of airports with passenger service can fluctuate somewhat) in the United States, or at least in the 50 states, the only one that was build and is operated by a private company, is a small airport serving a small metro area, with some seasonal flights to one city. In other parts of the world, airports are often private companies, for example, London Heathrow Airport is a private corporation. And yet in the United States, despite some attempts to encourage airport privatization, the only airport to be truly private is, (to put it bluntly) a rather small and redundant one. Whatever the possible economic and policy benefits of privatizing airports, it seems the concept has not taken off, in the United States, at least.