Mandatory Frequency Airport

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surface ...

with a mandatory frequency (MF), mandatory traffic advisory frequency (MTAF) or air/ground radio (A/G) is an airport which does not have a control tower but still requires arriving and departing aircraft to communicate with other aircraft or a radio operator on a published frequency. Mandatory frequency airports are rare in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, one example being

Ketchikan International Airport Ketchikan International Airport is a state-owned, public-use airport located one nautical mile (2 km) west of the central business district of Ketchikan, a city in Ketchikan Gateway Borough in Alaska, U.S. state that has no direct roa ...

(), but they are common in other countries such as

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

and

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

; often, an MF or MTAF airport is one with scheduled passenger service but insufficient traffic to support a

control tower Air traffic control (ATC) is a service provided by ground-based air traffic controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through a given section of controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled airsp ...

. If there is a flight service specialist monitoring the frequency, the specialist will give pilots advisories about traffic, weather, and surface conditions, and may relay

IFR In aviation, instrument flight rules (IFR) is one of two sets of regulations governing all aspects of civil aviation aircraft operations; the other is visual flight rules (VFR). The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) ''Instrument Fly ...

clearances from en route controllers, but cannot give clearances themselves. In the

, this type of airport is said to have an Air/Ground Radio service, using the callsign suffix "Radio". This is provided at airports that have a moderate level of VFR-only GA traffic. Some examples of MF airports in Canada include

Kingston/Norman Rogers Airport Kingston Airport , also known as Norman Rogers Airport, is a regional airport located west of the core of Kingston, Ontario, Canada. The airport is named after former MP Norman McLeod Rogers (Kingston City 1935–1940), Minister of Labour a ...

and

Kuujjuaq Airport Kuujjuaq Airport is located southwest of Kuujjuaq, Quebec, Canada. History The airport site at Fort Chimo was located and surveyed on 12 July 1941 by a United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) team under Captain Elliott Roosevelt, operating by ...

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Mandatory Frequency Airport Air traffic control Airbands