Airport of entry

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An airport of entry (AOE) is an airport that provides customs and immigration services for incoming flights. These services allow the airport to serve as an initial port of entry for foreign visitors arriving in a country.

In the United States, there are numerous airports of entry. Major airports of entry include:

In the United Kingdom, because the vast majority of air traffic is international, there are dozens of airports with customs and immigration facilities, ranging from the enormous airports at London Heathrow, London Gatwick and Manchester Airport to the tiny facilities at places such as Blackpool Airport, Newquay Airport and Derry Airport.

The word "international" in an airport's name usually means that it is an airport of entry, but many airports of entry do not use it. Airports of entry can range from large urban airports with heavy scheduled passenger service, like John F. Kennedy International Airport, to small rural airports serving general aviation exclusively. Often, smaller airports of entry are located near an existing port of entry such as a bridge or seaport.

On the other hand however, some "former" airports of entry chose to leave their name with the word "international" in it, even though they no longer serve international flights. One example is Osaka International Airport, or Itami Airport as locals call it. Even when Itami had ended all international services and became a purely domestic airport after the opening of Kansai International Airport in 1994, it kept its original name of "Osaka International Airport". Many airports in the nearby region have the same situation, like Taipei Songshan Airport. Songshan retained its official Chinese name, Taipei International Airport, after Chiang Kai-shek International Airport (now Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport) opened.