In support of its plan to maintain a single authoritative source of aeronautical data, the FAA published a major revision to its advisory circular (AC) 150-5300 18C, Guidelines and Specifications Surrounding Airport Data Collection. The revised standards cover the entire spectrum of the agency’s airport data requirements, including runway and stopway data, navigational aid data, obstruction data and data on various airport features, including taxiways, aprons and landmark features. Most of this information is sourced data or acquired by field survey and/or remote sensing methods.
Generally this AC is not mandatory, although the use of its guidelines is mandatory for the collection of geospatial airport and aeronautical data funded under federal grant assistance programs. In the document the FAA renamed some features, incorporated the option to manage all features using time and made a few additions to enable printing of an airport layout plan from airports' GIS data.