A theory of sizing airport passenger terminals

Airport planning and design is a complex task from the perspective of the main participants, such as the airport management (stakeholders), airlines, investors, users — both passengers and freight/cargo shippers and local community members. The latter have expressed a number of environmental concerns. These concerns extend to passenger terminals as a part of the airport landside area. Faced with the inherent complexity and sensitivity of the task, airport planners, designers, academics and researchers have developed a relatively consistent approach to planning, sizing and design of these terminals, known as ‘terminal sizing theory’. This paper describes this theory, including a description of the terminal components and operations, the main sizing principles and parameters and the relevant analytical and simulation models as the ‘core’ of the theory. The theory is applied to the development of a computer-supported simulation model for sizing a new passenger terminal at a relatively small (regional) airport. The structure, application and outputs indicate generosity of both sizing theory and the model, making them convenient for sizing any kind of airport passenger terminals after specifying the appropriate inputs.