Every public airport with commercial operations must fulfil strict requirements with respect to international safety and security requirements, including operational readiness of the airport infrastructure and airport personnel qualifications.
These requirements, which are virtually the same for small and large airports and result in high operational costs.
Small airports have problems to break even not only due to low throughput volumes but also limited other sources of income, e.g. non-aeronautical services, car park fees; which are substantial part of middle and large airport revenues.
It is considered that a small airport with annual throughput under 200 000 passengers is not able to cover its operational costs and needs to be subsidized.