95 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 for international passengers in 2024?

Dubai (DXB) has no domestic routes, so every one of its record 92.3 million passengers in 2024 counted as international; it had led that ranking for a decade.

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 and became Heathrow only in 1966, once the capital had other airports at Gatwick and Stansted to confuse it with.

Denver International owns the most land of any US airport, nearly twice as much as which runner-up?

Dallas/Fort Worth owns about 17,200 acres to Denver's 33,500; Denver built far out on the plains because its old airport was hemmed in, with runways too close together to add flights.

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

The peaks are white fabric, a Teflon-coated fiberglass membrane shaped to recall the snow-capped Rockies and the tipis that once stood on the plains.

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

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

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

Indoor waterfall: the Rain Vortex drops 40 metres through seven storeys from a hole in Jewel's glass roof, and in a thunderstorm the rain itself pours through to be collected and reused.

Which closed Hong Kong airport made pilots bank sharply over Kowloon's rooftops?

Kai Tak's approach had pilots aim at an orange-and-white checkerboard painted on a hill, then swing hard right at low level; it closed in July 1998 as its replacement opened.

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: Loganair's planes from Glasgow use three runways marked by wooden poles on the sand, and because high tide covers them the timetable changes with the sea.

Which Nepalese airport, where most Everest treks begin, has a short runway that slopes steeply uphill into a mountainside?

Lukla's airstrip, 527 metres long with a gradient of about 12 percent, was built in 1964 under Edmund Hillary, 11 years after he and Tenzing Norgay climbed Everest; it now carries both their names.

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

Maho Beach lies at the very end of the runway on the Dutch side of Sint Maarten, so landing jets pass just overhead; the blast from departing ones can knock people off their feet.

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 1.7-mile hop from Westray to Papa Westray, the world's shortest scheduled flight, links islands in which group?

Orkney's hop takes about two minutes including taxiing and covers roughly the length of Edinburgh Airport's runway; the islands' council pays for it as a lifeline service to Papa Westray.

Why did Qamdo Bamda Airport in Tibet need a 5.5-kilometre runway?

Thin air at high altitude gives wings less lift and engines less power, so at 4,334 metres aircraft need far more runway; the strip was once the longest at any civil airport.

At College Park, Maryland, the world's oldest operating airport, Wilbur Wright trained which service's first pilots in 1909?

The Army had just bought its first airplane from the Wright brothers, and Wilbur taught two lieutenants to fly it at College Park; one of them made the first solo by a military pilot.

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

Croydon's radio officer Frederick Mockford also devised the distress call 'Mayday' in the 1920s, from the French m'aider, 'help me', because so many of its flights ran to Paris; the airport closed in 1959.

Which Berlin airport, the centre of the 1948-49 Airlift, closed in 2008 and became a public park?

Tempelhof's runways reopened as a park in 2010, and in a 2014 referendum Berliners voted to ban any building on the field, so the old airfield remains open space.

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.

Oklahoma City's main airport is named for which humorist, who died in a 1935 plane crash in Alaska?

Will Rogers died with the pilot Wiley Post, whose name is on Oklahoma City's other airport, so the city's two airports honour the two men killed in the same crash.

Why do some US airport codes, such as PDX and PHX, end in an X?

A padded two-letter code is all it is: Portland and Phoenix kept their old weather-station codes and simply tacked on an X when aviation moved to three letters.

Mehran Karimi Nasseri, whose story inspired the film The Terminal, lived for 18 years in which airport?

Charles de Gaulle's Terminal 1 became his home in 1988 after his refugee papers went missing; he left in 2006, but moved back in weeks before he died there in November 2022.

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

Starfish: curved piers spread from one central hub; Beijing built the airport because its Capital airport had run out of room, and it opened in September 2019.

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

Istanbul Airport opened on the Turkish Republic's 95th anniversary; in April 2019 trucks moved some 10,000 pieces of equipment over from Atatürk Airport in under two days.

Heathrow's 1950s runways formed which shape?

A six-pointed star, a Star of David in outline, gave Heathrow six runways; four were later given up, leaving the parallel east-west pair.

Which Chicago airport, squeezed into one square mile, had runways too short for the first big jetliners?

Midway, renamed in 1949 for the Pacific battle, could not grow because the city had been built up on every side of it; when the Boeing 707 and DC-8 arrived in 1959, Chicago's jet flights went to O'Hare instead.

Which city's airport has the flying-saucer-like Theme Building, put up where a giant glass dome was once planned?

Los Angeles first planned a huge glass dome linking every terminal; when the scheme was scaled down, the Theme Building went up in 1961 to mark the spot where the dome would have stood.

New Orleans airport's code MSY honours which daredevil aviator, who died in a 1910 crash nearby?

John Moisant, the first pilot to carry a passenger across the English Channel, was killed on farmland that became the Moisant Stock Yards, the name thought to have given the code its S and Y.

Which Denver airport did the city's new one replace in February 1995?

Stapleton International Airport, Denver's airport since 1929, took its last flight the night before the new one opened; its control tower still stands, and the district built on the site dropped the Stapleton name in 2020.

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

An Emirates Airbus A380 model took the spot in 2008; the 40 percent scale British Airways Concorde it replaced now stands at the entrance to Brooklands Museum.

Which Canadian airport took in 38 diverted airliners on 11 September 2001, a story told in the musical Come From Away?

Gander, a small Newfoundland town, housed and fed some 6,600 stranded passengers and crew for days; it had the runways because it was once the main refuelling stop for Atlantic airliners.

Toronto Pearson airport lies mostly in which neighbouring city rather than in Toronto?

Mississauga did not exist when the airfield opened in the late 1930s as Malton Airport; the rural township around it later became the city, leaving Toronto's airport outside Toronto.

Which airport, opened in 1987 in London's Royal Docks, demands a steep 5.5-degree approach?

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

In which country is King Fahd International, listed by Guinness as the world's largest airport by area?

Saudi Arabia set aside about 780 square kilometres for the airport near Dammam, as much land as the whole of neighbouring Bahrain, though most of it is still empty desert.

Dallas Fort Worth is the largest hub of which airline?

American Airlines moved its headquarters to the airport in 1979 and opened its first hub there two years later; rival Southwest stayed at Dallas's smaller Love Field.

Which major European hub airport lies entirely below sea level?

Amsterdam Schiphol sits several metres below sea level on the bed of a former lake, the Haarlemmermeer, which gives the surrounding municipality its name; it began as a military airfield in 1916.

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

Courchevel's runway is so steep that the Tour de France has used it as a stage finish; with mountains all around, a pilot who commits to landing there cannot climb away to try again.

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

Cristiano Ronaldo was born on Madeira; the bronze by local sculptor Emanuel Santos lasted little more than a year before the airport replaced it with another artist's bust.

Which Tokyo airport lost most international flights to Narita in 1978 and began winning them back in 2010?

Haneda became an almost wholly domestic airport when Narita opened; a fourth runway and a new international terminal brought long-haul flights back in 2010.

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.

Which Asian capital's Don Mueang airport has a golf course squeezed between its two runways?

Bangkok's Don Mueang shares its airfield with a Royal Thai Air Force base, and the air force's golf course runs along the strip between the two runways.

Bar Yehuda, the world's lowest airfield at 378 metres below sea level, is near which body of water?

The Dead Sea has the lowest shores on Earth, and the desert strip west of it, also known as Masada Airfield, mostly handles charter and sightseeing flights.

Cochin airport in Kerala, India, became the world's first to run entirely on which energy source?

Solar power from a dedicated plant has met all of Cochin's needs since 2015, earning the airport the United Nations' Champions of the Earth award.

Which musical tells how Gander, Newfoundland, took in 38 diverted airliners on September 11, 2001?

Come From Away follows about 7,000 stranded passengers who nearly doubled Gander's population, and the townspeople who housed and fed them for days.

EuroAirport, serving the Swiss city of Basel, stands entirely on the soil of which other country?

France hosts the whole airport under a 1949 convention with Switzerland, and a customs-free road lets travellers reach Basel without a French customs check.

Which musician made the album Music for Airports after a dreary wait at Cologne Bonn Airport?

Brian Eno built the pieces by layering tape loops of differing lengths, hoping to defuse the anxious atmosphere of an airport terminal.

A retired Boeing 747 at which Nordic capital's Arlanda airport was turned into a hostel in 2009?

Stockholm Arlanda's Jumbo Stay offered 33 rooms inside the old jet, including a suite in the cockpit, until its owner went bankrupt in 2025.

Which US whistleblower spent about a month of 2013 stranded inside Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport?

Edward Snowden flew in from Hong Kong meaning to travel on, but with his US passport revoked he stayed in the terminal until Russia granted him asylum.

Cincinnati's main international airport is not in Ohio at all but across the river in which state?

Kentucky hosts the airport in Boone County, which is why its code, CVG, comes from the nearby city of Covington rather than Cincinnati.

Gisborne Airport in New Zealand is one of the few in the world where what crosses the main runway?

A railway line, the Palmerston North–Gisborne Line, cuts straight across the main runway, so trains and aircraft cannot use the crossing at the same time.

Which 1980 spoof comedy lampooned Airport 1975, right down to a guitar-playing nun and a sick child?

Airplane! took its plot from the 1957 thriller Zero Hour! but lifted the singing nun and the ailing young passenger straight from Airport 1975.

In the disaster film Airport 1975, what crashes into the cockpit of the Boeing 747 in mid-flight?

A light aircraft, a Beechcraft Baron whose pilot suffers a heart attack, slams into the jumbo jet and leaves nobody on the flight deck fit to fly.

In Airport '77, a hijacked Boeing 747 full of art treasures sinks in which stretch of ocean?

The Bermuda Triangle swallows the jet whole, leaving survivors in a flooding cabin on the seabed until Navy divers raise the plane with balloons.

Which silent-era star of Sunset Boulevard played herself in Airport 1975, her final film role?

Gloria Swanson appears as herself, a glamorous former star among the passengers, and the part was later parodied on The Carol Burnett Show.

Who won an Oscar for playing Ada Quonsett, the elderly stowaway in the 1970 film Airport?

Helen Hayes took Best Supporting Actress for the role, her second Oscar, and later became the first woman to complete an EGOT.

In the 1970 film Airport, what does D.O. Guerrero carry aboard a Rome flight in his briefcase?

An explosive device in the briefcase is Guerrero's plan to leave his wife a large life insurance payout, and an elderly stowaway is enlisted to help grab it.

Which novelist wrote the 1968 bestseller Airport, the source of the 1970 disaster film?

Arthur Hailey set each novel against the backdrop of a single industry, following Hotel with Airport and then Wheels, about car makers.

Which actor played mechanic Joe Patroni in all four Airport films, the only star in every one?

George Kennedy saw Patroni promoted in every sequel, from chief mechanic to vice president to consultant, until the character ended up as an airline pilot.

In Airport 1975, which actress plays Nancy Pryor, the stewardess who must fly a crippled Boeing 747?

Karen Black's stewardess takes the controls when the flight crew are killed or blinded, and keeps the jumbo airborne until a relief pilot is lowered in by helicopter.

The 1970 film Airport, set at fictional Lincoln International, was mostly shot at which real hub?

Minneapolis-St. Paul was redressed as the fictional Chicago hub, which the story had modelled on O'Hare.

Daocheng Yading, the world's highest civilian airport at 4,411 metres, is in which country?

China opened the airport in 2013 in a Tibetan prefecture of Sichuan province, with a first flight carrying 118 passengers from Chengdu.

Svalbard Airport, the world's northernmost with scheduled public flights, belongs to which country?

Norway had to build the runway on permafrost near Longyearbyen, and daily flights now link the Arctic islands with Tromsø on the mainland.

Which Dutch Caribbean island has the world's shortest commercial runway, only 400 metres long?

Saba's runway has hills on one side and cliffs dropping into the sea at both ends, so the airport is closed to jets and served by small propeller planes.

Velana International Airport occupies Hulhulé, an island beside the capital of which country?

The Maldives opened the airstrip on Hulhulé in 1960 with a runway made of slotted steel sheets, a short hop across the water from the capital, Malé.

Which South Atlantic island, where Napoleon died in exile, had no airport until 2016?

St Helena had relied on the mail ship RMS St Helena, and wind shear at the new runway forced its air service to use smaller aircraft than planned.

Iceland's main airport at Keflavík was built during World War II by the military of which country?

The United States built Keflavík to replace a small British landing strip nearby, and kept a base there until handing it over to Iceland in 2006.

Nicosia International Airport has sat abandoned in a UN buffer zone since 1974 on which island?

Cyprus lost its main airport when the fighting of 1974 left it stranded between the two sides, and a damaged Trident airliner sat on the tarmac for decades.

Incheon International Airport was built on land reclaimed between two islands in which country?

South Korea filled in the sea between Yeongjong and Yongyu islands to build Incheon, which replaced Gimpo as Seoul's main international gateway in 2001.

Toncontín Airport, notorious for a short runway among mountains, serves which capital city?

Tegucigalpa's approach ends in a sharp left turn just before the runway, and Honduras opened a replacement airport at Comayagua in 2021.

A giant bronze teddy bear with its head in a lamp sits in which Gulf capital's Hamad airport?

Doha's Lamp Bear, by Swiss artist Urs Fischer, is the best-known artwork at Hamad International, which opened in 2014 after years of costly delays.

Runway numbers come from compass headings, so a runway numbered 27 points in which direction?

West is 270 degrees on the compass, and the number drops the last digit, so the same strip used from the other end is runway 09.

At night, the edge lights that outline an airport taxiway for pilots normally glow which colour?

Blue marks the taxiway's edges while steady green lights run along its centreline, so pilots can tell the two apart at a glance.

Which Saudi city's airport has a vast tent-roofed terminal built just for pilgrims bound for Mecca?

Jeddah's Hajj Terminal can shelter 80,000 travellers at a time beneath its tent-like roof, engineered by Fazlur Rahman Khan.

Only passengers holding a boarding pass may enter which tightly controlled zone of an airport?

Airside access is tightly controlled, while landside, with its check-in desks and ground transport, remains part of the public realm.

In aviation, what do the letters ILS stand for?

Instrument landing system beams come in pairs: a localizer lines the aircraft up with the runway while a glideslope sets its descent, normally at three degrees.

Which architect, the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize, designed Beijing Daxing's terminal?

Zaha Hadid died in 2016 with several of her buildings still under construction, the Beijing terminal among them.

The jet that Captain Sullenberger ditched in the Hudson River in 2009 had just left which airport?

LaGuardia was barely behind the Airbus when a flock of Canada geese knocked out both engines, yet all 155 people on board survived the river landing.

Israeli commandos rescued 102 hostages in a 1976 raid on Entebbe airport, in which African country?

Uganda's dictator Idi Amin had backed the hijackers of a Paris-bound airliner, and the rescuers flew the freed hostages home by way of Nairobi.

Two Boeing 747s collided on a foggy runway in 1977, aviation's deadliest accident, on which island?

Tenerife's Los Rodeos airport was crowded with jets diverted by a bomb blast at Gran Canaria when a KLM 747 began its take-off run into a Pan Am one.

Charles Lindbergh ended the first solo non-stop Atlantic flight in 1927 at which Paris airfield?

Le Bourget drew a growing crowd as word spread that the Spirit of St. Louis was nearing Paris, 33 and a half hours after it left New York.

Which European airport, first due to open in 2011, finally began flights nine years late in 2020?

Berlin Brandenburg opened 14 years after construction began and 29 years after official planning for it had started.

Which Montreal airport, opened in 1975 as the world's largest by area, now has no passenger flights?

Mirabel's distant site and poor transport links made it unpopular with travellers and airlines, and its last passenger flights moved back to the city's older airport in 2004.

Which Japanese airport opened in 1978 after years of violent protests over the seizure of farmland?

Narita's opening slipped from March to May 1978 after protesters wrecked equipment days before the planned date, and one runway was later built around a holdout farm.

Which Chicago airfield, the default airport in early Microsoft Flight Simulator, closed in 2003?

Meigs Field was wrecked on Mayor Richard M. Daley's orders, when city crews carved large X-shaped gouges into its runway in the middle of the night.

FedEx sorts packages overnight at its 'superhub', which is based at which US city's airport?

Memphis sees nearly 400 FedEx Express flights a day, most of them at night, feeding a sorting hub that opened in 1981.

Which US airport was a routine stopover for Europe–Asia flights while Soviet airspace was closed?

Anchorage offered a way around the closed skies, and European airlines from British Airways to Lufthansa kept stopping there until 1991.

Which 1990 action sequel has terrorists seize air traffic control at Washington Dulles airport?

Die Hard 2 strands John McClane at the airport while he waits for his wife's flight to land during Christmas week.

Which US city's airport had a teal carpet so loved that fans gave it an Instagram hashtag?

Portland's carpet pattern showed the airport's crossing runways as controllers see them at night, and its removal set off an outpouring from fans online.

Two one-tonne eagles from The Hobbit films hung for years inside which New Zealand airport?

Wellington is home to Wētā Workshop, which built the birds for the terminal in 2013 and in 2025 replaced them with a spirit bird from local legend.

For American pilots at night, a beacon alternating single white and green flashes marks what kind of airfield?

A civil airport on land shows plain white and green, while a military field adds two quick white flashes between each green one.