Tioga, Watford City, Stanley, Grenora, Columbus and Crosby each have federal, public airports servicing the area. Mark Holzer has been working with the state's 90 public airports since 1980, and is currently the aviation planner for the North Dakota Aeronautics Commission.
"These airports are rural," Holzer said. "So they generally provide a base for the area's crop sprayers. Eighty percent of the flying at those airports benefit aerial application, such as applying herbicides and pesticides to treat the weeds."
Holzer works with the airports' local management to create construction plans, on scales from a few years to a decade. This planning keeps the facilities maintained and expanding to meet the area's aviation needs.
These construction plans are funded mostly by the federal government. The Federal Aviation Administration pays for 95 percent of a construction plan, with the state and local governments splitting the remainder. "We try to keep the facilities modern and the pavements safe," Holzer said. "We seal the cracks in the pavements. Safety is important."
The airports are seeing more traffic as technology improves. With satellite navigation, airplanes can find and land at the airports regardless of weather conditions.
"This technology opens the airports to new traffic," Holzer said.
With satellite nagivation, planes can use all-weather instrument approachings, using the satellites to navigate to the runways.
"They can fly in instruments and make landings day and night in all weather," he said.
Having these new satellite navigations is opening up those airports to another 15 to 20 percent on top of their normal activity.
John Benter, the airport manager at Stanley, said the satellite navigation capabilities have made it difficult to keep an estimate of how much traffic the airport is getting.
"A lot of times, they come in on GPS and we don't know that they've been there," Benter said.
The primary job of the airports' management becomes making sure that aviation fuel is available for purchase.
Besides crop-dusting, the airports serve a few other functions.
"Crosby is a good access point for customs and border patrol," Holzer said. "Stanley is now being a hub, Crosby built a new terminal, Watford City is looking for a new airport and Tioga just extended their runway to 5,000 feet."
All of the airports in the area, along with Williston's Sloulin Field International Airport, are used in weather modification flights.
One of the most important functions of the airports is as a location for air ambulance services to use.
"It's very important for those communities that have smaller airports to get this service," Holzer said. "If a patient needs to be taken somewhere inside the state or outside the state, they can be."
Many of the towns also have medical specialists flying in on a regular basis to fill gaps in medical coverage that local, general practice doctors cannot.
The smaller airports also serve the economic interests of the area, especially the oil industry. They allow businessmen to fly in and assess the local oil activity, and provides a base for seismography flights to assess the potential of a region.
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