This a picture of Gibraltar airport looking towards it's Spanish "twin" town of La Linea. The grey horizontal strip is the landing strip, and there is a road crossing it with cars and pedestrians on it.OK, relax. When a plane lands or is due to take off the road is closed so no-one gets knocked down. One of the buildings to the right of the road is the building housing check-in, customs, immigration, departure gate, cafe and duty free shop. The building is not big and so it is quite compact.
When our plane arrived there we exited by the back of the plane, moved through immigration and customs carrying our hand luggage and there was Ellie waiting for us. And then we walked with her past Spanish immigration and customs. Twenty minutes later we arrived at her flat - no taxi, bus car or any other form of transport needed.
When we left we walked from the Gate to the plane. The last time I did this was some years ago at City Airport.
Going back a lot more years the picture below is of me arriving at Zanzibar airport after my second ever flight. The plane is a Rapide, and yes it was a bi-plane. We and our baggage had to be weighed before the flight so that a clerk could work out a sitting plan for passengers and a loading plan for baggage that balanced the plane fore and aft, starboard and port. No calculator needed or available then. (I have read that some approximate balancing of passenger weights still takes place based on average weights for a man and a woman. That is why in a half empty plane passengers are spread out in the - computer calculated - seating allocation.)
You can see some baggage on the ground and and a schoolgirl stepping down behind me.
I hadn't mastered the art of packing then and so I am carrying my hat in my right hand and some shoes wrapped in a my blazer with help of my left hand. My Dad took the photo. Immigration and customs were very informal then.
