Every time I see airports around the world, I notice that many of them have a lot of different layouts (obviously) but which is more efficient?
Here are the options:
There are airports that have one long central terminal split into concourses; usually in between two or more runways (Hong Kong and Miami are good examples)
There are airports which have the terminals outside of all the runways. (Toronto-Pearson, and Boston-Logan are good examples)
There are airports which have all terminals separated into concourses stretched along the airfield (Atlanta, Denver, and London’s Terminal 5 are good examples)
Are one of these options the most efficient for airports or is it just up to the airport designers? I believe option 1 seems to be the most efficient because it’s used in some of the world’s busiest airports
Because it there is no concourse you check in then to the left of the check in desk is the security and directly after is the gate where boarding is in progress. No duty free.
Being an efficient airport isnt about the type of design of the concourse its the layout of the terminal.
Yes, it may seem efficient, but it’s a very small airport (smaller than other major international airports like LAX). Obviously, smaller airports may seem the most efficient becasue they’re not busy with millions of people going in and out. But I want to know about large international airports being efficient
I always think that LHR is an efficient set up with the terminals in the middle of the airfield (well except T4) and then two parallel runway, one to be used for take off and one for landings!
The efficiency depends on the size of the airport by passenger output. Airports like Londonderry city work well for the amount of traffic it receives, but when it’s controlled in IF its a nightmare due to traffic.
No one design is perfect, it depends on what you want. New York airports are hamstrung by airspace restrictions. In terms of efficency, LHR is quite good, they have a great system where each part of the departure and arrivals are down to a precise science to maximize utilization on the two runways. You can have whatever layout you want, but if you have incompetent people/bureaucrats planning traffic coming in and out (COUGHChinaCOUGH) you’ll be inefficient no matter what.