The airport terminal is a multi-region public transport building with special functions and the cooling load is a basic parameter determining the air-conditioning system for this special building. The large uncertainty in the parameters of the terminal cooling load calculation will affect the input data, which will lead to the uncertainty of the model results. In this paper, the load of a typical hub airport terminal is simulated and calculated on the basis of uncertainty analysis, and the sensitivity analysis of the influencing factors is carried out. The result shows that compared with the given parameters, more accurate average probability distribution and peak load distribution of terminal cooling load can be obtained under uncertainty parameters. The average load of the terminal is in the range of 55.2–78.5 W/m2 within the 95% confidence interval, and the peak load is in the range of 79.8–117.9 W/m2 within the 95% confidence interval. Load curves of various areas in the terminal are clustered. The results show that there are two main types of areas, i.e. one exhibits a single-peak curve and the other exhibits a peak-flat curve, which demonstrate the load characteristics of different zones. The sensitivity analysis shows that the most performance influencing factors are indoor temperature and humidity set point.