45 Fun Facts About Airport

Which airport was the world's busiest by passengers every year from 1998 through 2019?

Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson is named after two former Atlanta mayors, William Hartsfield and Maynard Jackson; only 2020's travel restrictions broke its run.

Which airport was the world's busiest by passengers on non-domestic routes in 2024?

Dubai International (DXB) handled a record 92.3 million passengers in 2024, all on international routes, making it the world's busiest airport for non-domestic traffic.

Chicago O'Hare's code ORD comes from the airport's earlier name; what was it?

ORD comes from Orchard Field, the airport's original name; it was renamed in 1949 for Medal of Honor recipient Edward 'Butch' O'Hare, but the code never changed.

Orlando's code MCO comes from what?

MCO stands for McCoy Air Force Base, the Strategic Air Command base that shared the site until it closed in 1975; the civilian airport kept the code.

Which Canadian rock band recorded an instrumental named after Toronto Pearson's code, YYZ?

Rush, the Toronto trio of Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart, released the instrumental 'YYZ' on 1981's Moving Pictures; its opening rhythm spells Y-Y-Z in Morse code.

What was JFK Airport commonly called until December 24, 1963?

Idlewild, after the golf course on the site, was the everyday name; officially New York International Airport, Anderson Field, from 1948, it became John F. Kennedy International on December 24, 1963.

Which architect designed JFK's winged TWA Flight Center, opened in 1962?

Eero Saarinen, the Finnish-American architect also behind the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, designed the TWA Flight Center; the landmark reopened as the TWA Hotel in 2019.

Heathrow opened in 1946 under what earlier name?

It opened in 1946 as London Airport, built over the former Great West Aerodrome and the hamlet of Heath Row; the name Heathrow became official in 1966.

Denver International owns how much land, the most of any commercial airport in North America?

Denver International covers 33,531 acres, about 53 square miles and nearly twice the land of Dallas/Fort Worth; the airport opened on February 28, 1995.

What material is Denver airport's famous peaked terminal roof made of?

The peaks are white fabric, a Teflon-coated fiberglass membrane evoking the snow-capped Rockies; heavy snow tore a hole in it during the March 2003 blizzard, closing the airport for two days.

Denver airport's notorious 32-foot 'Blucifer' sculpture is what animal?

It is a blue horse: Luis Jiménez's 32-foot fiberglass Blue Mustang, commissioned in 1993 and installed in 2008, two years after a section of it fell on and killed the artist.

What 40-metre world-record feature opened at the heart of Singapore's Jewel Changi in 2019?

Indoor waterfall is the record: the Rain Vortex cascades 40 metres down seven storeys inside Jewel Changi.

Hong Kong's Kai Tak Airport, famed for its hair-raising approach, closed in which year?

Kai Tak closed on 6 July 1998, the same day Chek Lap Kok opened; its checkerboard approach had pilots banking low over Kowloon City rooftops on final.

Which main road crosses the runway at Gibraltar's airport?

Winston Churchill Avenue, the road to the Spanish frontier, crosses the runway at grade; barriers close it for each aircraft movement, which is why the Kingsway tunnel was built to bypass it in 2023.

Barra Airport in the Outer Hebrides is believed to be the only one where scheduled flights land on what?

Flights land on a tidal beach: the cockle-shell sands of Tràigh Mhòr, where Loganair's Glasgow service uses three runways marked by poles and the timetable follows the tides.

Lukla's Tenzing-Hillary Airport in Nepal has a runway with what gradient?

The runway slopes at 11.7 percent, climbing about 60 metres over its 527-metre length; a 2010 History Channel programme rated Tenzing-Hillary the world's most dangerous airport.

Princess Juliana Airport's famously low landings pass right over which stretch of sand?

Maho Beach lies just beyond the threshold of Runway 10 on the Dutch side of Sint Maarten, so arriving jets pass barely 30 metres overhead; the jet blast famously knocks spectators over.

Japan's Kansai International Airport is built where?

It stands on an artificial island in Osaka Bay, built from 1987 and opened in September 1994, linked to shore by a 3.75-kilometre bridge; the reclaimed island has sunk several metres since.

Loganair's Westray to Papa Westray flight, the world's shortest scheduled service, covers what distance?

The hop is 1.7 miles (2.7 km), scheduled at a minute and a half and once flown in 53 seconds; it is about the length of Edinburgh Airport's runway.

Qamdo Bamda Airport in Tibet once had the world's longest runway, at what length?

The runway is 5.5 km (5,500 metres) long, needed because thin air at the airport's 4,334-metre elevation lengthens take-off runs; it was the world's highest airport until Daocheng Yading opened in 2013.

College Park Airport in Maryland was founded in 1909 so that whom could teach army officers to fly?

Wilbur Wright trained Lieutenants Frank Lahm and Frederic Humphreys there in October 1909 on the Army Signal Corps' first airplane; College Park is the world's oldest continuously operated airport.

Which airport near the British capital, opened in 1920, introduced the world's first air traffic control?

It also had the first airport terminal and the first airport hotel.

Tempelhof was the centre of which Cold War operation?

The 1948-49 Airlift flew over two million tons of supplies into blockaded West Berlin, most of it landing at Tempelhof; the airport closed in 2008 and became the Tempelhofer Feld park.

The world's first duty-free shop opened in 1947 at which airport?

Shannon, Ireland, then a refuelling stop for transatlantic flights, opened the first duty-free shop in 1947, the brainchild of catering comptroller Brendan O'Regan.

Who is credited with inventing the jet bridge?

Frank Der Yuen, a Chinese-American aviation engineer, is credited with inventing the jet bridge; 'Jetway' is a manufacturer's trademark that became the generic name.

How many letters are in an IATA airport code?

IATA codes have three letters, like LAX or JFK; the separate ICAO codes used by pilots and controllers have four, such as KLAX. IATA is headquartered in Montreal.

Mehran Karimi Nasseri lived in Terminal 1 of which airport from 1988 to 2006?

Charles de Gaulle's Terminal 1 became his home after his refugee papers went missing; the 2004 film The Terminal drew on his story, and he died at the airport in November 2022.

Beijing Daxing airport is nicknamed after which sea creature because of its terminal's shape?

The terminal's five radiating piers earned it the nickname 'the starfish'; designed by Zaha Hadid Architects with ADP Ingénierie, it opened in September 2019.

Which European hub, opened in October 2018, is run privately under a 25-year concession?

Istanbul Airport opened on 29 October 2018 and took all scheduled flights from Atatürk in April 2019; the İGA consortium built it and operates it under a 25-year concession.

How many runways does London Heathrow have?

In the 1950s it had six runways arranged in a hexagram; only the two parallel east-west ones remain.

Chicago's Midway airport was once nicknamed what?

The busiest square mile in the world was Midway's tag; O'Hare, its designed successor, began as an airfield for a Douglas C-54 factory in World War II.

The famous LAX Theme Building was a smaller version of what unbuilt plan?

The 1950s Pereira & Luckman master plan put a giant glass dome at the centre of the terminals; when that was scrapped, the 1961 Theme Building was built as a smaller echo of it.

New Orleans airport's code MSY honours a daredevil aviator who died in a 1910 crash; what was his name?

The site was once the Moisant Stock Yards.

Which Denver airport did Denver International replace when it opened in 1995?

Stapleton International Airport, Denver's airport since 1929, closed the night Denver International opened on February 28, 1995; its old control tower was kept as a landmark in the redevelopment.

A model of which aircraft has stood at Heathrow's entrance since 2008, replacing a Concorde?

An Emirates Airbus A380 model has marked the Heathrow entrance roundabout since 2008, when it replaced the 40 percent scale Concorde model, registered G-CONC, that had greeted arrivals on the Bath Road.

Changi Airport opened in 1981 to replace which Singapore airport?

Paya Lebar Airport, Singapore's international gateway from 1955, handed over to Changi on 1 July 1981 and became an air base; Kallang had served the city before 1955.

Toronto Pearson is mostly located in which city, not Toronto itself?

The town of Malton, its original site, is now part of Mississauga.

Which London airport, opened in 1987, sits in the Royal Docks with a steep 5.5-degree approach?

London City Airport opened in the Royal Docks in October 1987; its short runway and 5.5-degree glideslope, nearly twice the usual 3 degrees, require specially certified aircraft and crews.

Guinness lists which Saudi airport as the world's largest by area, at about 780 km²?

King Fahd (Dammam) served as a US airbase in the Gulf War before commercial flights began in 1999, and hosts one of the world's shortest international flights, 87 km to Bahrain.

Which airline has its largest hub at Dallas Fort Worth?

American Airlines has been headquartered beside DFW since 1979 and built its largest hub there; the airport itself is the second-largest in the US by land area after Denver.

Which major European hub airport lies entirely below sea level?

Amsterdam Schiphol sits about 3 to 4 metres below sea level on the floor of the Haarlemmermeer, a lake drained in 1852; the airport opened as a military airfield there in 1916.

The altiport serving which French ski resort has a 537-metre runway with an 18.6% gradient and no go-around?

Courchevel's altiport, at 2,008 metres in the Trois Vallées, has a 537-metre runway sloping 18.6 percent, so pilots commit to landing; the strip hosted a 2023 Tour de France stage finish.

Which footballer's name was given to Madeira's airport in 2017, at a ceremony remembered for an odd bust?

Cristiano Ronaldo, a Madeiran native, got the airport; part of its runway sits on a platform of pillars over the shore, like a beam bridge.

The first flight from Tokyo's Haneda airfield in August 1931 carried what unusual cargo to Dairen?

A load of insects went to Dairen in the Kwantung Leased Territory on 25 August 1931, the airfield's first flight; Haneda grew into the busier of Tokyo's two airports.

Washington Dulles airport, opened in 1962, was designed with what unusual system to carry passengers to planes?

Mobile lounges, bus-like rooms on tall chassis, carried passengers from the main terminal and rose to aircraft doors; hub growth made them impractical for most gates by the 1980s, though some kept serving Concourse D.