Airport ownership and operation[edit]
The Berlin Brandenburg Airport is publicly financed by the states of Berlin and Brandenburg and the Federal Republic of Germany.
Most of the world's airports are owned by local, regional, or national government bodies who then lease the airport to private corporations who oversee the airport's operation. For example, in the United Kingdom the state-owned British Airports Authority originally operated eight of the nation's major commercial airports - it was subsequently privatized in the late 1980s, and following its takeover by the Spanish Ferrovial consortium in 2006, has been further divested and downsized to operating just five. Germany's Frankfurt Airport is managed by the quasi-private firm Fraport. While in India GMR Group operates, through joint ventures, Indira Gandhi International Airport and Rajiv Gandhi International Airport. Bengaluru International Airport and Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport are controlled by GVK Group. The rest of India's airports are managed by the Airports Authority of India.
In the United States commercial airports are generally operated directly by government entities or government-created airport authorities (also known as port authorities), such as the Los Angeles World Airports authority that oversees several airports in the Greater Los Angeles area, including Los Angeles International Airport.
In Canada, the federal authority, Transport Canada, divested itself of all but the remotest airports in 1999/2000. Now most airports in Canada are owned and operated by individual legal authorities or are municipally owned.
Many US airports still lease part or all of their facilities to outside firms, who operate functions such as retail management and parking. In the US, all commercial airport runways are certified by the FAA[9] under the Code of Federal Regulations Title 14 Part 139, "Certification of Commercial Service Airports"[10] but maintained by the local airport under the regulatory authority of the FAA.
Despite the reluctance to privatize airports in the US (despite the FAA sponsoring a privatization program since 1996), the government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) arrangement is the standard for the operation of commercial airports in the rest of the world.