Airport Abandonment

[Kevin1a]

Let me say first that I ran a search using both the forums search tool and Google, and I could not find another thread addressing this topic.  Perhaps I was just choosing my search terms poorly, so if this is already addressed elsewhere, I would appreciate a link.  I am having an issue with my airport (maxis) abandoning or showing no efficiency.  What are some likely causes of this.  It happens periodically and all the buildings look dirty and run down.  It isn't really a high pollution area, and there are some police and fire stations in the vicinity.  There are some medium density commercial and residential buildings nearby.  Could they be interfering with the planes ability to land on my airport's runway?

I plan on building a new international (non-maxis) airport on my cities outskirts, but I want to keep the smaller airport as well because, like real life cities, I want my city to contain one or two smaller fields that used to be primary airports at an earlier time.

Does anyone know why this happens?

I appreciate your help.

[WC_EEND]

Well, from what I know, I can tell you that airports function like seaports in the game. The height of buildings plays no role whatsoever, I've had normally functionning airports in the middle of my cities. What the airports do need is sufficient commercial demand and capacity (like a seaport needs sufficient industry demand and capacity).

[nekseb]

May you have sometimes not enough water in this area?

[Kevin1a]

No, water wouldn't effect an airport.  The game has asked me to expand the airport 3 times, and it is now a large commuter airport.  What I mean by abandoned is that sometimes I query it and it says the actual usage is a typical number (in the thousands or so), and then other times I query it and it says the actual usage is 0 and the airplanes that symbolize efficiency are grayed out.

[RippleJet]

What I mean by abandoned is that sometimes I query it and it says the actual usage is a typical number (in the thousands or so), and then other times I query it and it says the actual usage is 0 and the airplanes that symbolize efficiency are grayed out.

That happens every now and then with airports (and seaports as well).
The airport usage isn't updated that often (less than once a month), and sometimes the usage drops down to 0,
especially after upgrading a port, or after restarting/reloading a game.