Hello,I am doing a term paper for a graduate level transportation planning class. The class really doesn't cover aviation so that is the general topic for my paper. I'll be going in to forecasting, legal issues, land use issues, governance, inter-modal connectivity, NEPA and CAA conformity... I'll be doing a paper and a presentation.Anyway, since most of the class knows very little about aviation, I need to give them some background information - something like the "anatomy of an airport" and definition of terms. Of course, I could do most of it off the top of my head but that doesn't really work in grad school. I need a good resource - something that is peer reviewed if possible but something official would work as well. Journals don't cover basic information like that and neither does the TRB's ACRP.Any ideas? Of course, I will scour the net but I thought there may be some professionals here that may know of something useful.

Hello,I am doing a term paper for a graduate level transportation planning class. The class really doesn't cover aviation so that is the general topic for my paper. I'll be going in to forecasting, legal issues, land use issues, governance, inter-modal connectivity, NEPA and CAA conformity... I'll be doing a paper and a presentation.Anyway, since most of the class knows very little about aviation, I need to give them some background information - something like the "anatomy of an airport" and definition of terms. Of course, I could do most of it off the top of my head but that doesn't really work in grad school. I need a good resource - something that is peer reviewed if possible but something official would work as well. Journals don't cover basic information like that and neither does the TRB's ACRP.Any ideas? Of course, I will scour the net but I thought there may be some professionals here that may know of something useful.

I'm sorry, but what is it you're looking for because I have a pile on my desk and my book bag. Some pretty basic stuff and some very in depth, advanced stuff. I'mwondering what kind of information you want. Then I'll point you in the right direction.EDIT: Nevermind. I somehow missed the first part of you post.-Airport Planning & Management, Fifth Edition. By Alexander T. Wells, Ed.D. & Seth B. Young, Ph.D; This one I believe is something like what you're looking for.-Air Transportation, A Management Perspective. By John G. Wensveen; This one is geared towards the airline industry but covers FBO issues, etc.-Practical Aviation Law, Fourth Edition. By J. Scott Hamilton; This one is broad and basic covering land use issues and many other topics.Review them, as some of your mentioned topics are not mentioned in all three. That's the best I can give you for now until I pull out the box of literature from past classes.

Start here, you will find zillions of links and references to continue diving deeper and deeper into the subject of air transportation until... well, make sure you notify friends and family of where you are going and take an ELT along just in case! :-)Cheers,- jahman.

Start here, you will find zillions of links and references to continue diving deeper and deeper into the subject of air transportation until... well, make sure you notify friends and family of where you are going and take an ELT along just in case! :-)Cheers,- jahman.

This is true. In some cases you can find great reference material at the bottom of wiki pages.

Thanks for all the help. I actually have a great deal of detailed, technical information from good sources. I guess what I am looking for is a one-stop source for the basic information provided in the wikipedia article but from a reliable source - what are the basic components of an airport, what is the difference between a commercial airport and a GA airport. What do the terms landside, airside... mean. Again, I know the answers but I have to cite the info. Like my report, the wikipedia pages are a conglomeration of sources which would require far to much work to come up with basic information that 99.9% of the people on AVSIM consider common knowledge but non-aviation enthusiasts may consider technical information.It is a tough perspective to approach things from. It is hard for me to determine what is common knowledge and what isn't.I guess, in short, I am looking for a source that reads like the Encyclopedia Britannica article for "Airport" but is from somewhere reliable (peer reviewed would be good). Encyclopedia Britannica is not a source that I would use in grad school. Academic journals, government sources and non-profit organizations are the best choices.

Like Zach said, check the references provided at the bottom of the wiki articles.BTW, WikiPedia *is* a reliable source: Try adding nonsense to some of the more important pages and be surprised how quickly any damaging edit gets reversed. There are thousands upon thousands of serious editors out there. Encyclopaedia Britannica, though a great reference in the past, today is but a bad joke compared to WikiPedia's 3.6 million articles. Do you think EB ever had an article on the Maldacena Conjecture like this? (The Maldacena Conjecture may sound abstruse, but it's the second most-quoted paper in modern physics after Einstein's General Relativity.)Cheers,- jahman.