Airport terminal


An airport terminal is a building at an airport where passengers transfer between ground transportation and the facilities that allow them to board and disembark from an aircraft.
Within the terminal, passengers purchase tickets, transfer their luggage, and go through security. The buildings that provide access to the airplanes are typically called concourses. However, the terms "terminal" and "concourse" are sometimes used interchangeably, depending on the configuration of the airport.
Smaller airports have one terminal while larger airports have several terminals and/or concourses. At small airports, the single terminal building typically serves all of the functions of a terminal and a concourse.
Some larger airports have one terminal that is connected to multiple concourses via walkways, sky-bridges, or tunnels. Some larger airports have more than one terminal, each with one or more concourses. Still other larger airports have multiple terminals each of which incorporate the functions of a concourse.
According to Frommers, most airport terminals are built in a plain style, with the 'concrete boxes of the 1960s and 1970s generally gave way to glass boxes in the 1990s and 2000s, with the best terminals making a vague stab at incorporating ideas of "light" and "air"'. However, some, such as Baghdad International Airport, are monumental in stature, while others are considered architectural masterpieces, such as Terminal 1 at Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris or Terminal 5 at New York's JFK Airport. A few are designed to reflect the culture of a particular area, some examples being the terminal at Albuquerque International Sunport in New Mexico, which is designed in the Pueblo Revival style popularized by architect John Gaw Meem, as well as the terminal at Bahías de Huatulco International Airport in Huatulco, Oaxaca, Mexico, which features some palapas that are interconnected to form the airport terminal.
terminal

Designs

Due to the rapid rise in popularity of passenger flight, many early terminals were built in the 1930s–1940s and reflected the popular art deco style architecture of the time. One such surviving example from 1940 is the Houston Municipal Airport Terminal. Early airport terminals opened directly onto the tarmac: passengers would walk or take a bus to their aircraft. This design is still common among smaller airports, and even many larger airports have "bus gates" to accommodate aircraft beyond the main terminal.
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Pier

A pier design uses a small, narrow building with aircraft parked on both sides. One end connects to a ticketing and baggage claim area. Piers offer high aircraft capacity and simplicity of design, but often result in a long distance from the check-in counter to the gate. Most large international airports have piers.

Satellite terminals

A satellite terminal is a building detached from other airport buildings, so that aircraft can park around its entire circumference. The first airport to use a satellite terminal was London Gatwick Airport. It used an underground pedestrian tunnel to connect the satellite to the main terminal. This was also the first setup at Los Angeles International Airport, but it has since been converted to a pier layout. The first airport to use an automatic people mover to connect the main terminal with a satellite was Tampa International Airport, which is the standard today. Other examples include the following:
Some airports use a semicircular terminal, with aircraft parked on one side and cars on the other. This design results in long walks for connecting passengers, but greatly reduces travel times between check-in and the aircraft. Airports designed around this model include Charles de Gaulle Airport, Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, Mumbai, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, Seoul's Incheon International Airport, Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Toronto Pearson Airport, Kansas City Airport, Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Rio de Janeiro–Galeão International Airport and Sapporo's New Chitose Airport.

Other

A particularly unusual design is employed at Berlin Tegel Airport's Terminal A. Consisting of an hexagonal-shaped ring around a courtyard, five of the outer walls are airside and fitted with jet bridges, whilst the sixth, along with the inner courtyard, is landside. Although superficially resembling a satellite design insofar as aircraft can park around most of the structure, it is in fact a self-contained terminal which unlike a satellite does not depend on remote buildings for facilities such as check-in, security controls, arrivals etc.
Especially unique are its exceptionally short walking distances and lack of any central area for security, passport control, arrivals or transfer. Instead, individual check-in counters are located immediately in front of the gate of the flight they serve. Checked-in passengers then enter airside via a short passage situated immediately to the side of the check-in desk, pass a single passport control booth, followed by a single security lane which terminates at the gate's waiting area behind. Pairs of gates share the same seating area, with small kiosks for duty-free and refreshments making up the only airside commercial offerings. Thus, other than the adjacent gate, passengers cannot move around the terminal airside and there is no central waiting lounge and retail area for departures. Individual rooms for arrivals, likewise serving a pair of gates, each contain a single baggage carousel and are alternately situated in between each pair of departure gates on the same level, such that the entrance/exit of each jet bridge lies at the boundary of the two areas. Two or three passport control booths are located close to the end of the jet bridge for arriving passengers and passengers leave the arrivals area unsegregated from departing passengers into the same landside ring-concourse, emerging next to the check-in desks. This allows both arriving and departing passengers immediate access to the courtyard on the same level, where short-stay parking and taxi-pickup are located. Vehicles can enter and exit via a road underpass underneath the terminal building entrance.
For flights using jet-bridges and passengers arriving or leaving by private transport, this results in extremely short walking distances of just a few tens of metres between vehicles and the plane, with only a slightly longer walk for public transport connections. A downside of this design is a lack of any provision for transfer flights, with passengers only able to transit landside.
Another rarer terminal design is the mobile lounge, where passengers are transported from the gate to their aircraft in a large vehicle which docks directly to the terminal and the aircraft. Washington Dulles International Airport, Mexico City International Airport, and Mirabel International Airport have used this design.
Hybrid layouts also exist. San Francisco International Airport and Melbourne Airport use a hybrid pier-semicircular layout and a pier layout for the rest.

Common-use facility

A common-use facility or terminal design disallows airlines to have its own proprietary check-in counters, gates and IT systems. Rather, check-in counters and gates can be flexibly reassigned as needed.

Records

This table below lists the top airport terminals throughout the world with the largest amount of floor area, with usable floor space across multiple stories of at least.
NameCountry and territoryPlace/CityFloor areaNotes
Dubai International Airport Terminal 3DubaiThree buildings connected by tunnels
Istanbul Airport Main TerminalIstanbulWorld's largest airport terminal under one single roof
Beijing Capital International Airport Terminal 3BeijingThree buildings connected by train.
King Abdulaziz International Airport Terminal 1Jeddah
Abu Dhabi International Airport Midfield Terminal ComplexAbu DhabiDue to open in 2020
Beijing Daxing International Airport TerminalBeijing
Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport Terminal 2Guangzhou
Shanghai Pudong International Airport Satellite ConcourseShanghaiWorld's largest stand-alone satellite terminal
Hamad International AirportDoha
Hong Kong International Airport Terminal 1Chek Lap Kok
Suvarnabhumi AirportBangkok
Kunming Changshui International AirportKunming
Barcelona Airport Terminal 1Barcelona
Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport Terminal 3AChongqing
Indira Gandhi International Airport Terminal 3Delhi
Incheon International Airport Terminal 1Seoul
Barajas Airport Terminal 4 main buildingMadrid
Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport Terminal 3Shenzhen
Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport Terminal 2Mumbai
Narita International Airport Terminal 1Narita
Soekarno–Hatta International Airport Terminal 3Jakarta

Ground transportation

Many small and mid-size airports have a single two or three-lane one-way loop road which is used by local private vehicles and buses to drop off and pick up passengers.
An international airport may have two grade-separated one-way loop roads, one for departures and one for arrivals. It may have a direct rail connection by regional rail, light rail, or subway to the downtown or central business district of the closest major city. The largest airports may have direct connections to the closest freeway. The Hong Kong International Airport has ferry piers on the airside for ferry connections to and from mainland China and Macau without passing through Hong Kong immigration controls.

Zones

Pre-Security
Post Security