How to spot hard-to-find airports

Backcountry strips can blend in with surrounding hilltops, fields, and mountains. Smaller city airports might seem to disappear amid a sea of houses and roads. Some are situated next to drag strips or highways that look more like a runway than the airport itself. Combine these factors with scenarios such as flying during low light or at night, when patchy snow dots the landscape, or when you are stressed by a precautionary mechanical issue or emergency, and it can become extremely difficult to find hard-to-spot airports.

These techniques can help you safely find your destination.

Research. At a minimum, become familiar with all available information regarding your flight as required by FAR 91.103. Check the chart supplement in your electronic flight bag (EFB) to get the pertinent details about the airport layout, runway information, and any special procedures. Study the sectional chart to note prominent landmarks leading up to the airport such as cities, bodies of water, or major roads.

Harness the power of technology in your research. Use FlightRadar24 or ADS-B Exchange to watch arrivals and departures at the airport. If it is a towered airport (yes, they can be hard to spot too), listen to LiveATC to learn points for initial contact, approaches, and any visual landmarks that are mentioned repeatedly. For backcountry airports, see if you can find videos of others flying in to get the lay of the land. Being able to trace your route on a map, down to the landmarks and terrain you expect to see as you approach the airport, will help you form a mental picture of the airport and what is around it. If you will be flying to an airport with a nearby drag strip, for example, this will allow you to visualize the sight picture you will have of the runway and drag strip out the windscreen based on the direction from which you will be approaching. Having this kind of mental picture could keep you from lining up on the drag strip.

Chair fly. Once you've done your research, mentally fly the route, giving extra attention to the last 10 nautical miles as you approach the destination. If you have access to a simulator, fly the route so that you can see how difficult the airport might be to spot, then note checkpoints along the way that you can use to find the airport. If you don't have access to a simulator, use the aerial map view on your EFB or Google Earth. Getting a bird's-eye view will help you become familiar with the area and could save you the embarrassment of circling over your backcountry destination based on your GPS, wondering on which hilltop the grass strip is actually located.

Map it. Based on your research and chair flying with an aerial view, mark prominent points as waypoints on your EFB. Think of it as building your own VFR approach procedure like organizations do for major fly-in events such as the Sun 'n Fun Aerospace Expo in Lakeland, Florida and EAA AirVenture Oshkosh in Wisconsin. Water towers, barns, large parking lots…they can all be useful in guiding you to the airport. Using pilotage will help you verify what you are seeing on your moving map with what you are seeing outside.

Altitude. Altitude is your friend. That's why climbing is included in lost procedures. The higher we are above the ground, the better our view of landmarks. Traditionally, we begin descending when we are 10 nm or so from the destination airport so that we are at pattern altitude by the time we are entering the 45-degree entry to the downwind leg. However, if the airport isn't in sight and identified before descending, it is best to stay high until it is spotted. Even if you have your route to the airport already plotted on your moving map, or if you are flying to a backcountry strip that you don't actually see until established in some part of the traffic pattern, stay high and fly over the airport, verifying that the visual cues you established will safely guide you there. It's better to overfly the airport high and then fly back a little to descend and follow your path in than to descend and mistake a parallel drag strip or grass field as the runway.

It might not be possible to employ all four of these techniques to find every runway, but try to combine as many as possible. For example, New Jersey's Linden Airport sits below Newark Liberty International Airport's Class B airspace that starts at 801 feet above sea level. The airport is surrounded by large warehouses that resemble hangars. New York's busy air traffic controllers are unlikely to grant a request to enter Class B airspace and overfly the airport to ensure your bearings. The other three techniques will need to work together to help you confidently identify the airport in a busy area where there's little room for error.