[samstave]

Paul allen owned an island in the san juans - when i used to fly to my mothers on Orcas we had to land first at paul allens airport...

There was a beauty and a freedom i used to feel from that experience:

There was no tower, nor staff; just a landing strip and we would fly in - do our thing and then take off again.

It was awesome... and i loved it, because we talk about america being the “land of the free” but we are really the “land of the regulated —special terms apply such as 1) are you rich enough to be free”

But i really liked flying into that island in particular over Orcas due to how libre it felt.

[nosianu]

As a private pilot flying in the US until the beginning of this millennium (then I moved away) - there are many, many such airports all over the country, that's nothing special. I landed at such airports even as a student pilot. Half Moon Bay airport, to be exact (student home airports were San Carlos and Palo Alto, so I was allowed to do that as a student, didn't even have to ask the instructor after getting the general approval for local solo flights). You even have "pilot-controlled lighting" to turn on runway lights if you arrive at night at some airports.

Yes, such airports are a lot of fun. Some are nothing but a strip in the middle of nowhere.

Each one has a frequency assigned and you announce yourself (or at least you are supposed to) when you come in to check if anybody else is there already, maybe even using the runway.

For reference: "Non-Towered Airport Flight Operations" -- https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...

I found a number, the vast majority of airports is in this category:

> There's a huge number of uncontrolled airports in the U.S. According to the FAA, there are 5,300 public-use airports. Out of that number, there are 500 that are controlled. [Mar 1, 2005 -- https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/uncontrolled-airpor...

[JudgeWapner]

What amazed me was learning that you can fly across country and never have to talk to ATC. I'm not sure on the details, I'm sure it's VFR, no class Bravo airspace, not sure about flight plan, but the fact that you can cruise around up there without ever announcing yourself or communicating with anyone is really surprising.

[nosianu]

Just to maybe help avoid confusion:

VFR and air space classes are orthogonal. You can fly through class B (e.g. SFO, for me, learning in the Bay Area, when you transition north starting from San Carlos you first have to talk to SFO tower and then get to pass north just a bit west of the airport, right through class B) or any class. VFR/IFR means something different [0]. A flight plan too is orthogonal, you can file a VFR flight plan too. It is used for safety mostly, in case you go missing, for example [1].

[0] http://www.stephan-schwab.com/airtravel/vfr-ifr

[1] https://thinkaviation.net/how-to-file-a-vfr-flight-plan/

[zrobotics]

Owning a private island definetly requires you to be super-wealthy, but aviation doesn't necessarily require that. My dad wouldn't even qualify as upper-middle-class, and he has a private grass strip for an ultralight. In many parts of the country, 40 acres isn't that expensive (my father paid 40k for the land, the entire place was under 200k. And many airports aren't towered, I guarantee there is an untowered airport within reasonable driving distance if any metro area in the US; most private pilots can't afford hangar space at a towered airport, and the larger airports aren't very friendly to small private planes anyway.

Note however that aviation almost requires you to have at least a middle class income now due to rising costs, even for a homebuilt. Whereas my dad was able to afford a used piper cub in the early 70s while he was a student, with no financial help from his parents.

Edit:typo

[walrus01]

Depends where the private island is. There's definitely people with private islands in the Broughton archipelago, and other areas in between Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast/BC Mainland, where the assessed value of the small island + home is less than a dumpy old 2BD house in East Vancouver.

If I had $1.25m in a bank account right now I could go write a check for a crappy early 1970s vintage Vancouver Special, on a narrow lot somewhere off Fraser Street in east van, or for a 3000 sq ft craft built house on a private island with its own off grid power system. Not talking about places with their own airstrip. Islands small enough to be accessible by boat or floatplane only.

[omegaworks]

>we talk about america being the “land of the free” but we are really the “land of the regulated —special terms apply such as 1) are you rich enough to be free”

Well.. most people in America live in places that depend on other people to coordinate shared resources. People will likely die or get seriously hurt if you hit them on your joyride flight, so we try to put procedures in place so that does not happen.

When you have the privilege to assert a colonial ownership claim to a large land area, you don't need to coordinate with other people when you're landing on an empty part of that land.

Same principles apply to companies as they scale. It's why startups can move fast.