QUOTE (the_real_elwood @ Jun 15 2009, 01:41 PM)

A corp airfield is probably going to have security rivaling anything you'd find at a major international airport.
I both agree and disagree with this. If Renraku owned an airfield, it would almost certainly be attached to a Renraku facility, and the facility would certainly have security on a similar level to what you'd find at an international airport (restricted access, cyberware scanners, etc.) depending on all sorts of factors we already know because we all play Shadowrun.
The airfield, being part of the facility, would not have much of its own security. Why would it? The only people who have access to the facility (in theory) are Renraku employees and approved guests, and they've already been vetted at the front door. There's no reason for additional security.
Stand-alone corporate airfields will depend upon what is being stored there. An airfield hosting the equivalent of a flying garbage truck probably won't have very much security. Garbage trucks are hard to steal, hard to sell, and not worth a whole lot, so their value to a thief is low (and thusly, they'll spend less protecting it). An airfield protecting the CEO's private thunderbird, needless to say, will be locked up pretty tight.
I suspect, given the increased intrusion level of the government in this dystopian world, and the extreme difficulty of planning flight plans in a city full of blocks of extraterritorial air, airfields not on corporate land will require all sorts of additional permits and security. And given the extremely high crime rate, additional security on that to keep people from stealing your planes is basically a requirement. Corporations can do what they want, but generally approach from a viewpoint of how much is it worth spending to protect whatever it is that's on the field.
In all cases, however, I don't think it will make it very difficult for paying customers to get on board with illicit materials. The goal is more to make sure that the planes aren't stolen, and when they are flown, they are done so in a safe way that makes the corporations and government happy.