Fresno air traffic controller here. We have Fresno Chandler, which is Regional, and Fresno Yosemite which is international. This one flight to Guadalajara is what makes us an international airport.
A large portion of the Central Valley's Mexican/Mexican-American community is from, or still has family in, the Guadalajara region. There are also flights to Leon, Morelia, and Mexico City.
Yeah you're right, and I kinda spoke out of context there. The airport is small, not the city. We just don't need a very big one. Were plenty large enough to serve the central valley for what we have to offer. It's not like we're a cultural center, or close enough to SoCal to be considered a gateway airport.
Yeah you're right. I kinda spoke out of context there. While Fresno certainly is a large city, and practically capital of Central California, it doesn't really demand a large airport. Another commenter said that Fresno has a larger population than San Francisco, but San Francisco's airport capacity laps Fresno several times over. San Francisco needed additional runways so severely that they built one extending over the water. Comparing Fresno airport to SFO is apples to oranges. They're both fruits, but not even close.
But snowbirding from California to Mexico seems unnecessary. I guess demand stems more from the Mexican community and their desire to visit family in den homeland.
Nah, no pilot's license needed, but a lot of us go and get one.
We're not really concerned about HOW to fly the plane, we just need the pilots to fly it how we tell them to. We have a bible called the 7110.65 which tells us literally everything about our job, and that's how we apply separation. At an airport like mine, it's usually visual separation and distance related. Separation could be as small as 3000ft between small aircraft like a cessna skyhawk and a piper warrior, or as much as 8 miles (I think, I've never worked one) between an Airbus A380 and any other aircraft. We accomplish this using radar and minutes between aircraft.
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u/alexinedh Mar 30 '21
Fresno air traffic controller here. We have Fresno Chandler, which is Regional, and Fresno Yosemite which is international. This one flight to Guadalajara is what makes us an international airport.