- It has a bunch of popular vacation destinations (beaches on the Gulf Coast, beaches on the Atlantic, theme parks at Orlando, cruise ship ports, and the Florida Keys)
- It's both really large (it would take ~10 hours to drive from Pensacola to Miami) and pretty dense (8th densest state as of 2015[1])
- It has a lot of military bases: 5 active Air Force bases and 4 Naval Air Stations, along with a bunch of other installations that also have airfields.
More broadly: It has good weather most of the year, it's the closest point in the continental US to a lot of places (the Carribean, Central and South America), and it had a ton of empty land during the period that the US started building a lot of airfields.
- It's both really large (it would take ~10 hours to drive from Pensacola to Miami) and pretty dense (8th densest state as of 2015[1])
- It has a lot of military bases: 5 active Air Force bases and 4 Naval Air Stations, along with a bunch of other installations that also have airfields.
More broadly: It has good weather most of the year, it's the closest point in the continental US to a lot of places (the Carribean, Central and South America), and it had a ton of empty land during the period that the US started building a lot of airfields.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories...