Meaning & use
municipal airport
Last updated
Meanings
nouncountable
An airport that is owned and operated by a city or town government, often small and used for local flights.
Grammar: Takes an or the; often part of a name: Austin Municipal Airport.
Patterns
- fly into a municipal airport
- a municipal airport near somewhere
The small plane landed at the municipal airport just outside town.
Residents voted to pay for repairs to the municipal airport.
Our flight left from a municipal airport rather than the big hub downtown.
nouncountable
Any public airfield that is run for general use by local authorities rather than a private company or the military.
Grammar: Often contrasted with private or military airfields.
Patterns
- a municipal airport for private planes
Flying clubs often keep their aircraft at a municipal airport.
The council debated whether to close the municipal airport.
Cargo planes use the municipal airport during harvest season.
Word forms
| plural | municipal airports |
|---|
Common combinations
- small municipal airport
- The mayor wants to expand the small municipal airport.
- land at the municipal airport
- The pilot decided to land at the municipal airport because of the storm.
- city-owned municipal airport
- The city-owned municipal airport loses money every year.
- municipal airport authority
- The municipal airport authority approved a new hangar.
- a regional municipal airport
- A regional municipal airport serves four counties.
Synonyms and how they differ
- local airport
- Local airport only says the airport is nearby, not that the city runs it.
- airfield
- Airfield is the older, plainer word for a place where planes take off, usually with fewer facilities.
- regional airport
- Regional airport describes the area served, while municipal airport describes who owns it.
Opposites
Word family
- municipality noun
- a town or city with its own local government
- municipal adjective
- belonging to a city or town government
- airport noun
- a place where planes take off and land
- airfield noun
- an area with runways for aircraft
Commonly confused: municipal airport or international airport?
municipal airport vs international airport
An international airport handles flights between countries, which many municipal airports do not.
Practice
The town council voted to spend money on the runway of its ____, which is owned by the city.
Choose one answer.
A municipal airport is owned by the city, which matches the council funding it. A private airstrip or military base is not city-owned.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “municipal airport”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.