Airport - Page 4

How do airports make money? Landing fees barely cover costs. Parking, concessions and real estate pay the bills, and that is why the food costs so much.

Most dangerous airports in the world ranked by how hard they are to land at: 12 runways that demand a special pilot qualification, from Lukla to Gibraltar.

Cities abandon their airports when they outgrow them and cannot expand. Here is why old airports like Kai Tak and Stapleton close, and what replaces them.

Why does Bangkok have two airports? Suvarnabhumi runs full-service global flights while Don Mueang became one of the world’s largest low-cost hubs.

Why New York has three major airports: JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark exist because one metro this big needs them, split by geography, history, and airport rules.

Haneda vs Narita: Tokyo has two airports because Haneda filled up and noise politics forced its international replacement 37 miles out into Chiba.

Why airports are far from the city they’re named after: budget airlines market distant secondary fields under a big-city name, and major airports get built far out.

London has six airports because Heathrow hit a hard capacity cap decades ago, and demand spilled into rival fields that each grew for a different reason.

Atlanta has the world’s busiest airport, with over 108 million passengers a year. Here is why a mid-size city beats New York, London, and Dubai.

Somewhere in the background of every flight you have ever taken, a set of voices you never heard was coordinating everything. The phrase “cleared for takeoff” that crackles through the cabin speaker represents the end of a chain of decisions made by people you will never meet, working in buildings you will never see, managing