Honolulu International Airport - Research Paper Example

In 1947 it was renamed as Honolulu international airport. On account of its strategic position in the center of Pacific Ocean, it functioned as a halting station for many flights crossing the ocean which flew from the Asia and Australia to the regions of north and South America. It is publicly owned by the state of Hawaii. With the continuous use of the airport, many developments have taken place in the airport especially after 1950s, in order to cater to the growing needs of air transport and to facilitate the increasing amount of air traffic.

In 1965 the original terminal building at the airport was demolished in for the development of the John Rodgers building. The terminal building underwent many expansions and the Diamond Head Concourse was added to it in 1970, the Ewa Concourse in 1972 and the Central Concourse in 1980. The airport covers about 2216 acres of land area and about 2210 acres of water. It has four runways with asphalt or bituminous surface and two runways on water that provide service to the seaplanes for landing and take off.

Out of them, two are parallel east-west runways and two crosswind runways. The reef runway (8R/26/L) is entirely constructed offshore on reclaimed land. It has been identified as an alternate landing place for the NASA space shuttles. The airport also shares some of the defense airfield facilities with the Hickam Air Force Base. Currently, the airport provides services to 31 operating airlin. The terminal has facilities for shopping, medical service, business center with conference room, restaurant and hotel.

The Wiki Wiki buses run between the terminals for transport on the airfield. Functioning as a hub and spoke airport, it acts a primary hub for international aviations and as a point to point airport for the domestic airways. It is one of the large hub airports of total 29 such hub and spoke airports in the United States. It shares 1.36% of the total passenger traffic out of the total large hubs in the United States with a total number of 84,796 fight departures and commuting a total number of 8,684,893 passengers.

1 It also transfers a freight of 199,144.89 tones and 28,931.18 tones of mails in the year of 2000.2 The mode of transportation to and from the airportThe airport is connected with freeways to other parts of the island and to other islands via domestic airlines as well as water ways. As of now, in Honolulu, there are no fixed rail mass transit systems. The interstate H-I freeway connects the Honolulu city with the international airport and the same road also connects the Hikam Air Force base with the airport.

Nimitz Highway and the Queen Liliuokalani Freeway connect the airport with other parts of the Oahu Island. Many state-authorized and non authorized bus services shuttle between Waikiki, a well known beach resort on Oahu Island, and Honolulu Airport. The buses offer transportation to other hotels in Waikiki from where transportation services are available for other travel destination. The airport is in excellent connection with the Honolulu city with the public transportation service, called 'The Bus'.

Buses commute from the place at an interval of 30 minutes to the city area thus providing good amount of connection to the