An airport is a diverse and and extremely complicated organizational business complex. Many separate companies, authorities and organisations - although in some cases in competition with each other - have to work together. The prime task is to offer its customers attractive facilities and services to cover their needs.
The customers of an airport are: passengers, airlines, flight operators, customs, agents, etc. The major aims are to ensure smooth passenger flow, to handle aircraft on time and to ensure overall security. The services are: providing and maintenance of buildings and infrastructure, co-ordination of all users.

The organisations involved have to work together closely and smoothly in order to achieve high standards of service. These include:

Handling of
aircraft

Control of passenger flow

Sorting and transportation
of baggage

Storage and distribution of freight

Modern airports have to solve the following particular difficulties:

• Daily flight operations are exposed to extreme fluctuations (delays, cancellations)
• Other imponderables are weather conditions and technical problems
• Systems must have high availability 24 hours a day and 7 days per week
• Event-related communication is indispensable to ensure efficient handling

Is the airport a hub, entailed out-of-the-ordinary requirements and more complex processes are the result. Large airports are always in competition with the "guaranteed minimum connecting time", which is - as an example - 35 minutes at Munich Airport.

At airports, handling processes cannot be planned exactly in advance or influenced as in industrial logistics. No matter what events occur - these processes, which affect thousands of passengers and the people coming to pick them up, must be mastered by permanent change management.