Not sure they’re a great example of how airports make money if they’re not like most airports.
The short answer is that airports make money by fees on and rentals from airlines, renting space to freight (UPS, Fedex, US Postal) companies, and especially concession agreements for all the stores, rental car agencies, advertising, things like attenna’s for cell service & network programming (CNN etc). My local airport has the equivalent of a malls worth of stores - and gets 2x the $ per square foot of prime downtown real estate in spending. Sure - it’s a tougher place to do biz - and all your employees need to pass tsa background checks.
Passenger fees from larger airports tend to go to infrastructure upgrades and be controlled by airlines. Mid size & smaller - directly to the airports.
Your airline fees are a competitive pressure that can determine who becomes a hub for an airline. But - my City owns the airport - no local taxes go into the airport at all - it’s an enterprise funded endeavor. Something even city council needs to be reminded of from time to time.
edit: to put it in perspective by staffing - there’s 800 city employees (including a fire station & police station) - and 19,000 employees of all the affiliated businesses (airlines, UPS, restaurants, stores, car rental, TSA, customs etc) at my airport. It’s really a small city all by itself.
