AirIndex Tracks 148 Changes in the U.S. Heliport Record Across Three FAA Data Cycles

Since June, 55 heliports entered the federal file, 41 left the operational population, and 52 existing records were materially revised.

Six hospital-heliport coordinate discrepancies corrected in the AirIndex record remain unchanged in the federal registry.

South Carolina, USA — AirIndex (Vertical Data Group) today published the first quarterly account of change across the United States heliport record. In June, AirIndex released a full audit of the 5,647 FAA-registered operational heliports then on file and opened the Landing Record, a continuously maintained census of every one of them. Across the three FAA data cycles since, 148 of those facilities changed in the federal file, AirIndex corrected six locations the federal data had wrong, and a new monitoring layer flagged construction and airspace pressure at 56 sites. Every change is dated, sourced, and permanent in the AirIndex ledger.

What moved in the federal file

Fifty-five heliports entered the registry, 19 of them carrying a hospital or medical name, including Sage Memorial Hospital in Ganado, Arizona and Banner Gateway Medical Center in Gilbert, Arizona. Forty-one facilities left the operational population, including three pads registered under a single company name in Massachusetts. The FAA population of operational heliports now stands at 5,661, a net gain of fourteen since June. AirIndex retains the 41 departed facilities as closed records rather than deleting them, so its own register holds 5,702 current and historical facilities and the history of a site survives its removal from the federal list.

A further 52 facilities stayed on the list but changed underneath. In most cases the FAA revised the recorded pad dimensions, the coordinates, or both. Both are important inputs to whether a site can support eVTOL operations. The June audit found that 98.5 percent of registered heliports had never had an independent field inspection, which is why a revision to either field is treated as material and recorded.

What AirIndex corrected, and what the federal file shows since

In July, AirIndex corrected the coordinates of six hospital heliports in its own record, five of which it had first documented in June. The federal file places each one between 0.6 and 1.3 nautical miles from the pad. Each correction rests on an FAA obstruction-evaluation case that names the facility and gives its surveyed position. One example is Guthrie Troy Community Hospital in Troy, Pennsylvania, which the federal file locates 0.88 nautical miles from the position recorded in FAA case 2012-AEA-205-NRA. AirIndex keeps the FAA coordinate alongside its own on every corrected record, so any later change in the federal file is visible.

All six remain unchanged in the federal registry in every data cycle published since. AirIndex publishes its corrections openly with their sources; the figure records what the federal file shows, not a judgment about the agency.

“The June report told the industry what the record looked like on one day. This is the part that matters more: the record does not hold still. A hundred and forty-eight facilities changed in the federal file in a single quarter, and six errors we documented with the FAA's own case numbers are still there. Anyone underwriting, planning, or operating against a copy of the file from June is already working from an outdated picture of the national network.”

The record now watches for pressure, not just error

In August, AirIndex added two monitoring layers to the Landing Record. The first tracks FAA obstruction filings near registered facilities. In its first two weeks it matched 347 distinct filings to 245 heliports, generating 480 facility-level alerts, along with three formal FAA determinations. The second cross-references facilities against permit activity, hospital expansion, and observed aircraft movements to open a dated situation when conditions around a site change. It has opened 57 situations at 56 facilities: 28 for construction pressure, 14 of them rated high, 17 where a suspect federal record coincides with real air traffic, and 12 where observed activity meets a gap in the record. Six have since closed because the triggering condition no longer met the monitoring rule.

Alongside these, the verification pipeline recorded 17 new terrain discrepancies, where the FAA-published elevation differs materially from USGS ground data, refreshed the data-integrity assessment on 48 records, and moved the risk tier of five individual facilities on the strength of new evidence.

How to read these numbers

The facility change ledger began recording on 8 June 2026, four days after the baseline report. Additions, removals, and FAA revisions are counted from the first differential comparison against the FAA file on 4 July; changes between the seed and that date appear in the July batch. The 148 changed facilities are distinct facilities, not events. Obstruction alerts are counted from 18 August and facility situations from 19 August, when those layers went live; one filing can alert more than one nearby facility, which is why 347 filings produced 480 alerts. On 11 June, AirIndex recalibrated its facility risk model, which moved 2,709 facilities from the Elevated tier to Moderate in a single event. That recalibration is recorded in the ledger as a methodology change and is excluded from the five individual tier movements reported here. AirIndex publishes these windows so that every figure above can be checked against the ledger it came from.

Why a maintained record matters

The FAA has stated that initial advanced air mobility operations will rely on existing airports and heliports. That makes the federal heliport file the starting map for the industry, and it makes the rate at which that file changes, and the rate at which its errors persist, a material fact for anyone deploying capital or aircraft against it. A single audit can describe the map. Only a record that is maintained, compared against each new federal release, and never silently rewritten can show how the map is moving.

Availability

The Landing Record is free to explore at airindex.io/landing-record. The complete facility change ledger, per-facility dossiers, situation monitoring, and the change feed API are available under licensed access. Inquiries at airindex.io/contact.

Notes to editors

Three findings from this release, each traceable to the AirIndex ledger. One: 148 distinct facilities changed in the FAA heliport file between June and September 2026, with 55 added, 41 removed from the operational population, and 52 revised. Two: six hospital heliports whose federal coordinates AirIndex corrected using FAA case numbers remain unchanged in every federal data cycle published since. Three: in the first two weeks of monitoring, 347 obstruction filings were matched to 245 registered heliports and 57 facility situations were opened, 14 of them rated high for construction pressure. The June baseline report, The State of the U.S. Heliport Record, is at airindex.io/research/state-of-the-us-heliport-record.