Denver International Airport has been one of the busiest airports in the USA because of its geographical location. United Airlines, Continental Airlines, Western Airlines, TWA are some of the many airlines that cross Denver International Airport daily. Because of the troubles Stapleton International Airport had due to Denver's weather and wind patterns causing nationwide travel disruption, the importance of the new airport construction became very clear.
With the construction of Denver International Airport, Denver was determined to build an airport that could be easily expanded over the next 50 years to eliminate many of the problems that had plagued Stapleton International Airport. This was achieved by designing an easily expandable midfield terminal and concourses, creating one of the most efficient airfields in the world.
Denver International Airport's airfield is arranged in a pinwheel formation around the midfield terminal and concourses. Thus the air traffic is very fluid and the independent flow of aircrafts to and from each runway is made without any queuing or overlap with other runways. The design of Denver International Airport allows it to add additional runways whenever it is necessary and it can go up to a maximum of 12 runways. At the time being Denver International Airport currently has four north/south parallel runways and two east/west parallel runways. In order to avoid excessively long taxi distances, it has been decided that the runways ending closest to the terminals to be used for landings, while the ones starting closest would be used for takeoffs. Most narrow body aircraft do not use reverse thrust while landing because they save time by rolling to the runway's end before exiting.
The longest commercial precision-instrument runway of Denver International Airport is the sixth runway. The sixth runway is also the longest in North America heaving a length of 16,000 feet (4,877 meters). Compared to the other Denver International Airport runways the extra 4000 feet of the sixth runway allows a fully loaded jumble jet to take off in Denver's mile-high altitude during summer months, thereby providing unrestricted global access for any airline using Denver International Airport.
The taxiways at Denver International Airport have been positioned so that each of the midfield concourses can expand significantly before reaching the taxiways. The concourse primarily used by United Airline, Concourse B is longer than the other two concourses, but all three concourses at Denver International Airport can be expanded as needed. Once this expansion is exhausted, space has been reserved for Concourses D and E. Once fully built out, Denver International Airport should be able to handle 110 million passengers per year, up from 32 million at its opening.
All international flights that arrive in Denver International Airport that require customs and immigrations services currently fly into Concourse A. All the eight gates are used for international flights at present. Also the north facing gates on Concourse A are equipped to divert incoming passengers to a hallway which connects to the upper level of the air bridge, and enters Customs and Immigration in the north side of the Main Terminals.
