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[Trekkin]

Long story short: I don't like the new TSA stuff and will be avoiding it in my choice of airport. That's not my question. My question is this: how correlated is the passenger flow through a particular airport to its financial success? Is their financial success even cared about by any other part of the industry? I don't know enough about economics, particularly the realities of the airport/airline dynamic in particular, but all the media attention is given to "the airlines", which leads me to believe the airports themselves are not all that important.

So how do airports work? How are they funded; do the airlines pay them on a per-route basis or something? If no one uses a particular airport, how long will it take to fail? CAN an airport fail, or is there some kind of incentivised safety net?

Or, to instill all of this down to a single question: if, instead of avoiding air travel altogether, specific airports are boycotted, are they sufficiently financially dependent on passenger traffic to begin pushing for changes, and would this pressure be effective?

[alway]

I'm not entirely certain, but I think the arrangement between airport and airline is similar to a landlord-tenant sorta deal. Though I'm not certain on it.

[Zangi]

I figure the airport rents out retail space.  Landlord/Tenant deal similar to malls, but with super security.
How they deal with airlines?  It probably is per route... In a way... I don't see airlines buying the 2-route pack if they are only going to use one...  or the airport selling a 3-route pack and then giving a 4th just like that later.
Though, I suppose their may be package deals... and the logistics... by jah... that must be something.  Figuring out where to fit +1 route.... what routes to push back or ahead...

[Eagle_eye]

I believe that airports rent out landing rights to airlines for planes coming from certain destinations. Lower passenger flow doesn't directly change the airport's income, but airlines may notice and cut some routes, which would.

[Sir Finkus]

Long story short: I don't like the new TSA stuff and will be avoiding it in my choice of airport. That's not my question. My question is this: how correlated is the passenger flow through a particular airport to its financial success? Is their financial success even cared about by any other part of the industry? I don't know enough about economics, particularly the realities of the airport/airline dynamic in particular, but all the media attention is given to "the airlines", which leads me to believe the airports themselves are not all that important.

So how do airports work? How are they funded; do the airlines pay them on a per-route basis or something? If no one uses a particular airport, how long will it take to fail? CAN an airport fail, or is there some kind of incentivised safety net?

Or, to instill all of this down to a single question: if, instead of avoiding air travel altogether, specific airports are boycotted, are they sufficiently financially dependent on passenger traffic to begin pushing for changes, and would this pressure be effective?

I don't think it really matters.  If enough people boycott to avoid the groping and strip searches, airlines will stop making as much money.  Once the airlines start losing money, they'll start bitching and hopefully pressure the TSA into changing their policies.  My guess is that a few major airlines complaining will do a lot more than thousands of "normal" people, unfortunate as that is.

[mainiac]

I believe the government foots the bill of airports.  It then recoups some of that expense through service fees on airlines.  But a substantial fraction of the economics of airport operation is based around taxpayer subsidies.  There are some proposals to increase the service fees on the airlines to cover the full costs of running the airports, but they aren't likely to go anywhere, especially with th republicans in effective control of congress.