This isn’t one of those “… change a lightbulb” jokes; USA TODAY was curious about what it takes to operate airports, which are often referred to as “cities within cities.”
According to a recent economic impact study conducted for Airports Council International - North America, about 1.2 million people work at 485 commercial airports in the United States.
Some of those employees work directly for an airport operator. Others are employed by concessionaires, government agencies and other entities doing business at airports.
For example, 63,000 people work at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, making the world’s busiest airport the largest employer in the state of Georgia.
In that 63,000 count, ATL includes airline, ground transportation, concessionaire, security, federal government, City of Atlanta and airport tenant employees.
On duty are two art department coordinators, a full-time wildlife biologist, engineers for the airport’s Plane Train and Sky Train, and a mobile medical response team that includes EMTs who jump on bicycles to cut down on the time it takes to respond to a medical emergency inside the airport.
Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport boasts its own police, fire protection and emergency medical services and a daily workforce of over 60,000 people.
At Los Angeles International Airport, the Badging Office has issued badges for 50,000 airport workers, reports LAX public relations director Nancy Castles.
“They all don’t work at the same time because these workers are distributed over three work shifts, since we’re a 24/7 operation,” said Castles, and that count doesn’t include workers for the courtesy vehicles for airport-area hotels, rental car companies and private parking lots; nor the drivers of public transportation such as taxis, door-to-door shuttle vans, long-distance buses, etc. “which would be a few thousand more,” she added.
While LAX airport police decline to share a specific number, LAX also claims to have the highest number of working police canines — dogs that handle explosive-detection and crime — at a single U.S. airport.
“This number does not include federal law-enforcement canines belonging to Customs & Border Protection, U.S. Agriculture’s ‘beagle brigade’ and TSA,” said Castles.
The active badge count at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport tops 41,000 and among the workers there are chaplains, doctors, massage specialists, wine bar pianists and cobblers.
There are 19,000 badged employees at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, including airline employees, runway painters and the team that works on the bag handling management system that in 2014 processed 33 million bags, said airport spokesman Brian DeRoy.
There are also customer service representatives sometimes charged with holding up the “End of the Line” signs the airport uses to help orient passengers at security checkpoints.
San Antonio International Airport has about 5,000 vetted and badged employees, said airport spokeswoman Evelynn Bailey. Included in that count are employees who make sure the airport’s 1,000 fire extinguishers are “present, accounted for and maintained,” and another highly-organized employee who issues and keeps track of the keys for the 4,000 doors on airport property.
The 3,986 badged employees at Austin Bergstrom International Airport include an art coordinator, a music coordinator for the airport’s 21 weekly live concerts, the meat cutter at the post-security Salt Lick BBQ (who must work with a knife TSA requires be chained to the counter) and, soon, trainers who work at the airport’s pet hotel, scheduled to open this fall.
Long Beach Airport in California has 100 employees who work in the maintenance, operations, administration, noise and environmental and security departments. On duty are painters who make sure that the terminals look nice for passengers and that the airport’s 12 miles of runway lines are clear and visible for pilots.
Ninety-nine employees work full- or part-time at Indiana’s Fort Wayne International Airport, including Customer Service Agents tasked with assisting passengers with luggage, driving the courtesy parking lot shuttle, helping passengers using wheelchairs on and off planes, and doing various other tasks in the terminal.
Those workers are supervised by FWA’s Customer Service and Safety Supervisor. That person not only makes sure the customer service program (which famously includes free cookies for arriving passengers) is running smoothly, but attends to the airport’s operations and safety.
“It’s a little bit of an odd combination,” said airport FWA spokeswoman Katie Robinson.
Multitasking is not unusual for workers at small airports.
At Lancaster Airport in Pennsylvania, a general aviation airport with three weekly commercial flights on Sun Air Express to Pittsburgh and two to Dallas/Fort Worth, there are 23 airport employees.
“Of those 23, eight are maintenance staff,” said airport director David Eberly, “But in addition to taking care of the grass, the building, the lights, the pavement and everything else, our maintenance staff workers are cross-trained for ARFF — aircraft, rescue and firefighting — duties. If there is an emergency, it will be our maintenance staff responding in the fire truck.”
Harriet Baskas is a Seattle-based airports and aviation writer and USA TODAY Travel's "At the Airport" columnist. Follow her at twitter.com/hbaskas.
