Meaning of Airport

What is the Airport

The airport is an air port, aerodrome, station or terminal where there is regular aircraft traffic.

This area includes all its buildings, facilities and equipment. Airports are those public aerodromes or terminals that have services or intensity of air movement and with a series of requirements to be called airport.

An airport is a defined area of land or water destined totally or partially to the movement or travel of air transport, and to the arrival or landing and departure or departure of aircraft.

In airports, different functions are carried out in addition to the landing and take-off of aircraft, such as refueling, preventive and corrective maintenance of aircraft, and the loading and unloading of goods, passengers and luggage. They also have parking areas for aircraft that are not in service, parking areas for passenger vehicles, taxi and public transport areas, commercial areas and different services, etc.

In this way, airports have two parts:

1. the land-side of the aerodrome, where the passenger terminal, parking parks, customs, trade zones, and other services for passengers are located; Y
2. the air-side (air side) of the aerodrome, where the runway is (take-off and landing), the taxiways or taxiways (auxiliary runways where the planes wait for take-off or are on their way to the terminal after of a landing), parking areas for aircraft (airport ramps or platforms) and hangars (where aircraft are stored, for maintenance).

The airports also have an area control center (ACC), where air traffic controllers (ATC) or control towers are located, which control, direct, organize and manage the movement of aircraft both on their own airport as in the air area that is under its jurisdiction.

There are airports of various types depending on their function or activity, for example, there are airports for military aviation , called air bases; others for civil aviation , which can be commercial ( low-cost tourism ), sports, cargo, general aviation.

Within airports for commercial aviation , they are called aerodromes or international airports, those aerodromes with flights from abroad or destined abroad, and that provide customs, migration, and health services, among others; and are called national or regional airports, those aerodromes with internal flights, only within a country, and therefore, lack of customs service.

In commercial airports there are also security controls, such as passenger, baggage and cargo controls. These controls maintain security on the plane, performing controls on objects such as weapons and explosives, drug controls, animal controls, etc.