The Airport in the Jet Age 1962 Encyclopaedia Britannica Films

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'Explores a large metropolitan jet airport, from the traffic control tower to the baggage-processing center. Shows glimpses of hundreds of people on the job.'

Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airport

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports often have facilities to store and maintain aircraft, and a control tower. An airport consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surface such as a runway for a plane to take off[3] or a helipad, and often includes adjacent utility buildings such as control towers, hangars and terminals. Larger airports may have airport aprons, taxiway bridges, air traffic control centres, passenger facilities such as restaurants and lounges, and emergency services. In some countries, the US in particular, they also typically have one or more fixed-base operators, serving general aviation.

An airport solely serving helicopters is called a heliport. An airport for use by seaplanes and amphibious aircraft is called a seaplane base. Such a base typically includes a stretch of open water for takeoffs and landings, and seaplane docks for tying-up.

An international airport has additional facilities for customs and passport control as well as incorporating all of the aforementioned elements. Such airports rank among the most complex and largest of all built typologies with 15 of the top 50 buildings by floor area being airport terminals...

A terminal is a building with passenger facilities. Small airports have one terminal. Large ones often have multiple terminals, though some large airports like Amsterdam Airport Schiphol still have one terminal. The terminal has a series of gates, which provide passengers with access to the plane.

The following facilities are essential for departing passengers:

Check-in facilities, including a baggage drop-off

Security clearance gates

Passport control (for some international flights)

Gates

Waiting areas

The following facilities are essential for arriving passengers:

Passport control (international arrivals only)

Baggage reclaim facilities, often in the form of a carousel

Customs (international arrivals only)

A landside meeting place

For both sets of passengers, there must be a link between the passenger facilities and the aircraft, such as jet bridges or airstairs. There also needs to be a baggage handling system, to transport baggage from the baggage drop-off to departing planes, and from arriving planes to the baggage reclaim.

The area where the aircraft park to load passengers and baggage is known as an apron or ramp (or incorrectly[citation needed], "the tarmac").

Airports with international flights have customs and immigration facilities. However, as some countries have agreements that allow travel between them without customs and immigrations, such facilities are not a definitive need for an international airport. International flights often require a higher level of physical security, although in recent years, many countries have adopted the same level of security for international and domestic travel.

"Floating airports" are being designed which could be located out at sea and which would use designs such as pneumatic stabilized platform technology...