B. J. and I have been traveling to various parts of the world for almost fifty years now and we are still on the trail and in the air. We have flown in and out of the biggest and busiest airports in the world and we never cease to be amazed at all those planes going and coming and buzzing around those airports.

How do airports cope with millions of passengers?

A big airport is a living organism with one prime function: to keep its life blood—its passengers—flowing freely through its veins and arteries. The number of passengers is astronomical and growing fast. In 2000, the world’s ten busiest airports processed approximately 505 million people between them. World-wide, airports were spending at least $80 billion in 2000 to satisfy their passengers. Today with the growing added cost of strict airport security, it is much more.

The world’s busiest airport in Atlanta is used by over 50 commercial airlines and handles over 60 million people a year. This works out at around 7000 passengers every hour. On an average day, about 2500 aircraft pass through the sprawling Atlanta airport complex. If several jumbo jets arrive within minutes of each other, thousands of people are disgorged at once causing congestion that can undermine the plans and fray the tempers of passengers, destroy confidence and cut into airline profits. Bad programming, faulty machines, and personnel strikes can have the same effect.

What keeps this multipart airport structure functioning appropriately? The credit goes to an intricate but smoothly operating airport management and air traffic control system.

Baggage control is a major factor of efficient airport organization. Excepting carefully scrutinized carry-ons, luggage is managed separately from the passengers, partly for security reasons and partly because it is stowed in a separate part of the aircraft. It is the baggage handler’s job to see that the baggage ends up at the same destination as its owners.

At the Delta Airline Terminal in Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, computer-coded baggage tags are read by laser, and automatic baggage sorters process over 500 pieces of luggage a minute.

When they (we) arrive at an airport, travelers are offered a bewildering range of services. And when they (we) discover where the one we are looking for is, they (we) may have to walk, access moving sidewalks, and escalators, or hop a “tube train” to get there. At the Atlanta airport, floor-space covers about 60 acres.

Each terminal comes to resemble a small city, with its own army of baggage handlers, cleaners, nursing staff, administrative people, stores, restaurants, restaurant staff, and maintenance workers.

Keeping airports up and running and keeping flights on schedule as they should is truly one of the amazing miracles of modern man.