Ithaca International Airport: An Airport on Autopilot. : It’s Time for Change.

Airport operations form the backbone of flight transportation across the USA. Safe, adequate, and convenient flights rely on the symbiotic relationship between multiple key actors. This paper seeks to understand the complex nature of one such airport within Ithaca NY, and how a transfer from county jurisdiction to becoming its own authority could help circumvent and navigate a plethora of organizational and structural issues. This paper is written under a system thinking lens in the hopes to best address the needs of the airport. A CAS analysis is used and an ABA model it utilized resulting in the understanding that many of the bureaucratic and political issues facing ITH can be removed if airport authority were granted.