City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport — Colorado Springs, United States

Shared runways and airspace with Peterson Space Force Base give COS an unusually direct military pedigree for a civilian commercial airport, and the field sits at an elevation exceeding six thousand feet, among the loftiest of any sizable passenger airport in the United States. Colorado Springs itself hosts an outsized concentration of military and aerospace institutions for a city its size, including the United States Air Force Academy and the NORAD command complex buried within nearby Cheyenne Mountain, and COS benefits from the steady business and government travel that this concentration generates. Tourists heading toward Pikes Peak, Garden of the Gods, and the broader Rocky Mountain front range likewise pass through the terminal in growing numbers as the city markets itself as an alternative to the congestion of Denver International Airport, roughly seventy miles to the north. Thinner air at this altitude affects aircraft performance calculations, a routine consideration for pilots operating regularly out of Colorado's higher-elevation airfields.