Working of an Airport – A simplistic view (as seen by

passengers and airport admin)

To keep count of how many people are inside the airport (all terminals),
we will assume that the entry into and exit from the airport are tracked.

Arrival and Departure

Arrival
Flight lands after getting clearance to land. Till clearance is given, flights
will be in queue waiting to land.
The clearance could be based on “First Come First Serve” or based on
emergencies – running out of fuel, emergency onboard, etc.
Passengers get down from the plane in the form of a queue, are directed
towards different conveyor belts to pick up their luggage.
Luggage is taken out from the flights in a Last In First Out manner and
transferred onto the circular belt which keeps going around. Passengers
pick up their luggage and new pieces are put onto the belt. The belt is
operational till all the pieces are picked.
We can assume that the passengers pick up their luggage and load
these onto a cart one above the other (Stack them up).
People come out of the terminal, take out their luggage pieces on a Last
in First Out basis and get into a queue to book a taxi and go home.

If people have arrived on an international flight, they need to clear the

customs before getting out of the airport.
Departure
Passengers enter the airport, put their luggage through an X-RAY
machine for scanning (this a typical queue). They proceed to different
counters to check-in their luggage and to get the boarding passes. They
have to stand in a queue for this purpose (There will be number of
queues – for different airways, destinations, etc). There could be priority
given to passengers based on their age, gender and physical condition.
Priority could also be given based on how close you are to the departure
time of your flight.
Once the luggage is checked in, the number of pieces each passenger
is carrying is recorded onto the boarding pass and the pieces are put
onto a mini conveyor belt at which loads the luggage onto the flight in a
Last In First Out manner.

Flights are assigned different runways based on their availability and

suitability also keeping in mind the other departing and arriving flights.

Passengers enter into the plane through 2 different queues depending

on what their seat numbers are: either the front half of the plane or the
rear half.
Status of different flights are to be displayed on a screen (this is a
dynamically changing list based on the time of arrival and departure. The
information displayed includes (but not restricted to) flight number,
Source, Destination and time of arrival or departure. All this information
could be getting written into and read from files.

We can sort these based on destination and time (may be) and keep
displaying information which could be refreshed at regular predefined
interval of time.

If people are travelling on an international flight, they need to go through

immigration counter.
Assumption:
Arrival and Departure of passengers (and staff) are through different
terminals.