Airport terminal

thumb|right|Aerial View of the [[Tom Bradley (American politician)|Tom Bradley International Terminal of Los Angeles International Airport in July 2022. This terminal handles the most origin and destination (O&D) flights in the world.]]

thumb|Interior of [[Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport Main Terminal Concourse in July 2008.]]

An airport terminal is a main building at an airport where passengers transfer between ground transportation and the facilities that allow them to board and disembark from an aircraft.

The buildings that provide access to the airplanes (via gates) 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, a single terminal building typically serves all of the functions of a terminal and a concourse. Larger airports might have either one terminal that is connected to multiple concourses or multiple almost independent unit terminals.

Early history

The first airfields, built in the early 20th century, did not have passengers and thus did not need the terminals. Large facilities were built, however, to house the fragile and inventive airships of the time protecting them from elements and industrial spies. Still, some of the concept architectural designs resembled the modern terminal buildings: Erich Mendelsohn’s sketch (1914) contained a large building with the attached ancillaries for planes (the central building was intended not for the passengers, but for a dirigible). The predecessors of the modern terminals were the structures erected for the air shows of the Edwardian era (for example, the Reims Air Meet in 1909). These buildings usually were L-shaped, with one wing dedicated to the planes and flight personnel, and the other intended for the spectators, with a grandstand and restaurants in an arrangement similar to the one used for the racetracks. The shows also featured occasional passenger flights. The other template of a terminal was provided by the first airline, the German DELAG that featured sheds for Zeppelins combined with passenger spaces close to the centers of cities, like the railroad stations.

The first European passenger airports of the interwar period in the major transportation nodes (London, Paris, Berlin) were converted military airfields (London Terminal Aerodrome, Croydon Aerodrome, Great West Aerodrome, Le Bourget, Tempelhof) and lacked the spaces for the actual passengers. US, on the other hand, lacked the war infrastructure and had to build the airports from scratch, mostly following the "hangar-depot" building type where, staff, passengers, and airplanes were all accommodated inside a single large building, like the one at the Ford Dearborn Airport (1925–1926).

Dedicated passenger buildings started to appear. In Europe, Le Bourget got a new buildings in classical style arranged in very non-airport-like manner around a central garden in the early 1920s. The "air station" of Königsberg Devau (1922) was probably the first design resembling the modern ones: Hanns Hopp, a German architect, placed a passenger building flanked by hangars into the corner of an airfield. This design influenced the Tempelhof, arguably the seminal design in the history or airports: the original Modernist terminal by Paul and Klaus Englers of 1926-1929 was placed into the center of the field, thus defied the need for expansion, and had to be replaced by the new building in the late 1930s (architect Ernst Sagebiel). Hounslow (now Heathrow airport) was processing the passengers through a reused aircraft hangar, and a new classical terminal was built in Croydon in 1928. In the US, by 1931 the first airport in Chicago (now Midway Airport) had its own Art Deco terminal building.

Sagebiel's Tempelhof had an appearance of a major railway terminus and housed, like many other European airports, great restaurants. The design survived for more than 60 years, highly unusual for an airport due to Sagebiel being prescient and oversizing the building beyond the scope of the original needs.

The original Le Bourget design was corrected by in 1936–1937, with the new Modernist single-terminal layout following ideas of not-yet-unfinished Tempelhof (but without covered access to the planes) and Croydon.

New York's LaGuardia Airport (Delano and Aldrich, 1939) contained many features common in the modern designs: two-level layout for separation between departing and arriving passengers, "spine" concourse extending to the both sides of the building, "dispatcher booths" as precursors to the airport gates.

Airbridges

Tempelhof faced a contemporary critique for its cantilevered roofs intended to protect the planes and passengers − but wasteful in terms of construction and limiting the future aircraft designs (in addition to the lack of separation between the boarding and deplaning passengers). The movable covered ways (precursors of the modern jet bridges) were experimented with in the 1930s. The Boeing's United Airport in Burbank, California featured retractable canopies already in the 1930. The tubes first appeared in the 1936 terminal at the London South Airport. The circular terminal design included six telescopic rectangular in section tubes for passengers, moving over the rails.

Rail links

The terminal at London South (now known as Gatwick Airport) featured the first direct rail link connection (to the London Victoria Station). The rail ticket was included with the airfare.

Centralized luggage handling

thumb|Modern [[baggage carousel]]

The system for early separation of departing passengers from their luggage (check-in desk) was introduced in the Speke Airport in Liverpool (1937–1938). It remains a key element of design of most passenger terminals ever since.

After Second World War

thumb|The [[TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport was built in 1962 and was used as Trans World Airlines's terminal until 2001. It was connected to the JetBlue Terminal 5 in 2008, and converted into the TWA Hotel in 2019.]]

Some airlines checked in their passengers at downtown terminals, and had their own transportation facilities to the airfield. For example, Air France checked in passengers at the Invalides Air Terminal (Aérogare des Invalides) from 1946 to 1961, when all passengers started checking in at the airport. The Air Terminal continued in service as the boarding point for airline buses until 2016.

Chicago's O'Hare International Airport's innovative design pioneered concepts such as direct highway access to the airport, concourses, and jetbridges; these designs are now seen at most airports worldwide.

When London Stansted Airport's new terminal opened in 1991, it marked a shift in airport terminal design since Norman Foster placed the baggage handling system in the basement in order to create a vast open interior space. Airport architects have followed this model since unobstructed sightlines aid with passenger orientation. In some cases, architects design the terminal's ceiling and flooring with cues that suggest the required directional flow. For instance, at Toronto Pearson's Terminal 1 Moshe Safdie included skylights for wayfinding purposes.

Security

Originally, the airport terminals were secured the same way as the rail stations, with local police guarding against the common crimes, like pickpocketing. The industry-specific crimes were rare, although the first plane hijacking occurred in the 1931 (in Peru). The 1960s brought the waves of terrorism and the tight security based on the ICAO recommendations. By the 1990s both passengers and luggage were routinely screened for weapons and explosive devices. The old floorplans of terminals were frequently inadequate (and structures not strong enough to carry the weight of the new equipment), so extensive redesign was required. Passenger garages integrated into the terminals were moved out to reduce the potential effects of the car bombs. Time spent by passengers at the airports greatly increased, This simple design is still common among smaller airports.

Linear

For larger airports, like Kansas City International Airport, Munich Airport and Charles de Gaulle Airport, allowing many passenger to walk across tarmac becomes unfeasible, so the terminals switch to the "linear" layout, where the planes are located next to an elongated building and passengers use jet bridges to walk on board. The design places limit on the number of gates, as the walkability requirement dictates the total length of the building (including the "spine" concourses) to be less than mile.

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 .

{| class="wikitable sortable"

! Name

! Country and territory

! Place/City

! data-sort-type="number" | Floor area

! class="unsortable" | Notes

| Dubai International Airport Terminal 3

| ||Dubai

| Three buildings connected by tunnels

| Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport Terminal 1-2 complex

| ||Guangzhou

| Istanbul Airport

| ||Istanbul

| World's largest airport terminal under one single roof

| Amsterdam Schiphol Airport

| ||Amsterdam

| Largest single airport terminal in the European Union with seven piers and three departure halls under a single roof

| Beijing Capital International Airport Terminal 3

| ||Beijing

| Three buildings connected by train

|Hamad International Airport

|||Doha

| Terminal area formally 725,000m2 before addition of concourses D & E

| King Abdulaziz International Airport Terminal 1

| ||Jeddah

| Abu Dhabi International Airport Terminal A

| ||Abu Dhabi

| Opened in November 2023

|Beijing Daxing International Airport Terminal

|||Beijing

| Shanghai Pudong International Airport Satellite Concourse

| ||Shanghai

|| World's largest stand-alone satellite terminal

| Hong Kong International Airport Terminal 1

| ||Chek Lap Kok

| Suvarnabhumi Airport

| ||Bang Phli

| Kunming Changshui International Airport

| ||Kunming

|Barcelona Airport Terminal 1

| ||Barcelona

| Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport Terminal 3A

| ||Chongqing

| Indira Gandhi International Airport Terminal 3

| || Delhi

| Incheon International Airport Terminal 1

| ||Incheon

| Wuhan Tianhe International Airport Terminal 3

| ||Wuhan

| Qingdao Jiaodong International Airport

| ||Qingdao

| Barajas Airport Terminal 4 main building

| ||Madrid

| Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport Terminal 3

| ||Shenzhen

| Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport Terminal 2

| ||Mumbai

|Narita International Airport Terminal 1

| ||Narita

| Soekarno–Hatta International Airport Terminal 3

| ||Jakarta

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.

A large hub airport often has 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.

References

Sources

External links

Airport Terminal Buildings – 1956 CAA publication

pt:Aeródromo#Conceitos