Airport terminals and Ground access

[attachment=16535]
Introduction-
The airport terminal , comprised of passenger and cargo terminal bulidings, aircraft parking, loading ,unloading and service areas such as passenger service facilities, automobile parking and public transit stations, is a vital component to the airport system.


The historical development of airport terminals-

.Just as there were no runways or other airfield facilities during the very earliest days of aviation, there certainly were no terminals, at least the way they are recognized today.
.The first facilities that could be remotely considered airport terminal areas evolved in the early 1920s with the introduction of airmail service.
. Airmail operations required small depots in order to load and unload mail, fuel aircraft, and perform any required maintenance.
.The facilities required for performing basic ticketing and weighing functions, as well as for aircraft boarding and alighting the relatively few passengers and little cargo that used civil air transportation could be, and were often, incorporated into one-room facilities, strikingly similar to the facilities that served the railroads.

Unit terminal concepts-

.These first terminals were the earliest centralized facilities, centralized meaning that all passenger processing facilities at the airport are housed in one building.
.The first centralized facilities became known as the earliest simple unit terminals, because they contained all required passenger processing facilities for a given air carrier in a single-unit building.