Hello Callum,
FS9 only comes with just a handful of 'good' airports and the rest of them look precisely as you said.
But do not worry. There are literally hundreds of sceneries that you can download, install and hey presto; you can have a very realistic airport instead of the usual FS crap.
Sceneries are divided into freeware and payware.
Some freeware have excellent quality some others don't but they're all free.
The payware ones are almost always of good quality but then, this was to be expected.
Below is a link with a list of freeware sceneries for FSX and FS9 for the ENTIRE world.
You will see of course NOT every airport has a scenery but so many do.
http://walhalla.mine.nu/fs2004.phpHappy browsing and send us some screenshots after you have installed them for us to have a look.