Featured Map for 4 September 2017:
Burning Man 2017

Many people in the United States celebrate the Labor Day holiday today, but for a smaller group today marks the conclusion of 2017's Burning Man festival in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, about 90 miles (145 km) north of Reno. The festival is served by Black Rock City Municipal Airport, which temporarily operates on the smooth surface of the desert's dry lakebed for two weeks every year.

A variety of aircraft are used for flights to Burning Man, with many turboprops (at least partially in deference to the airport's high density altitude). This year, the largest type was the 19-seat Beechcraft 1900; the Pilatus PC-12, which seats up to eight passengers, accounted for over half of the flights by larger aircraft. No jets visited this year but a Cessna CitationJet put in an appearance at least once, as did an Antonov An-12.

Today's Featured Map illustrates the Nevada and California routes flown by larger aircraft to and from Burning Man this year. Six other airports—three in Colorado plus one each in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia—are off the map in order to show the dense clusters of airports near San Francisco and Los Angeles and, to a lesser degree, near Lake Tahoe. Several airports were only origins at least until today (green) and a few others were only destinations (red). The majority were both origins and destinations (navy, with large titles).

References and additional information:

• Burning Man
  • Black Rock City Municipal Airport
• Magic Airport – Air & Space Magazine (August 2007)
• Black Rock Ciy Airport (Gerlach, NV) 88NV / 88NV Flight Tracker – FlightAware
• Beechcraft
• Beech / Beechcraft 1900 Specifications – Flugzeuginfo.net
• PC-12 NG – Pilatus Aircraft