9.4: Airport operations

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The main function of an airport, besides facilitating the passenger intermodal connection, is to ensure that aircraft can land, take off, and move around in an efficient and safe manner. Thus, many systems and subsystems are needed to facilitate achieving this end, encompassing many protocols and processes. These processes are most of the times hardly visible to passengers, but have extraordinary complexity, specially at large international airports. We will focus herein on the airport operations duties of Air Traffic Management (ATM) and, fundamentally, on the airport navigational aids that must be available to ensure safe operations. Last, we will briefly point out some issues regarding safety management and environmental concerns in airport operations.