Santos-Dumont coined the word airport a year before the Wrights flew
Talking to The New York Times in 1902, the Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont predicted that within about a decade people would fly the Atlantic between New York and Paris. He added that New York would become the world's main airport within twenty years, and in saying so invented the word itself.
The word aeroplane was older still, dating from the 1870s, decades before powered flight worked. Today airport is often a legal status: every airport is an aerodrome, but in some countries only aerodromes certified by the aviation authority may call themselves airports. The US definition is a landing area regularly used to pick up or drop off passengers or cargo. As of 2009 the CIA counted roughly 44,000 airports or airfields visible from the air worldwide, 15,095 of them in the United States, more than any other country.
Most airfields are modest, with a single runway under 1,000 metres, while airline airports usually pave 2,000 metres or more. Skyline Airport in Inkom, Idaho, gets by with a strip just 122 metres long. The area where planes park to load people and bags is properly the apron or ramp; calling it the tarmac is technically wrong. Terminals split into a landside open to the public and an airside reachable only with a boarding pass, crew identification or a staff pass.
Airports earn money in three streams. In 2021 aeronautical revenue, such as airline rents and landing, parking and hangar fees, made up half the total; non-aeronautical income from shops, rental cars, advertising and car parks supplied 34 percent; and non-operating revenue the remaining 16 percent. Landing fees depend on an aircraft's weight and size, and parking a plane of 100,000 pounds at New York's JFK costs 45 dollars an hour, rising with weight. Because many airports are local monopolies, governments often cap what they may charge airlines.
Shopping is big business: US airport outlets took 4.2 billion dollars in 2015, and many new terminals route passengers straight from security through a walk-through duty-free store. Some airport restaurants serve regional specialities so travellers in transit can sample local food without leaving.
Source: Airport
