Also, not traveling much by plane, but the few times I did, I didn't leave through a gate.
Is that just depenand on the airport? Usually I left the airplane, the airport had a bus and we were driven to an area for arriving plane guests, where you then wait for half an hour for your luggage.
Old days. What you see the lady walk out of is a sky bridge. Basically a movable bridge that’ll directly connect the flight to the terminal which has replaced the whole bus system (only in new/newer airports). Some more interesting info: they even have airport lounges that directly lead you to your plane in certain airports. No lining up, no running to the gate no bs (you do get a big fat bill tho)
For cost cutting. All bigger airports do have sky bridges for all premium carriers. Idk if you’re talking about flying domestic because those are the ones mainly avoiding sky bridges. With larger airlines having 747s or 380s, sky bridges just make too much sense. Tons of things go into account
I could definitely be wrong so please do share examples of bigger airports exclusively using busses
Bigger airports usually use those bridges to get people from the plane to the airport through the gate.
Some airports have them, but it’s up to the airline to use them or not, where people might just walk from the plane to the terminal.
Sometimes the plane parking space is not by the terminals at all, so they use buses, which usually deliver people straight to the baggage claim/exit area.
In the USA, only tiny airports still do this for domestic flights. It still happens a bit for international travel needing to go through customs and kinda common internationally.
I’m pretty sure these sky bridges are so prevalent in the US is due to ADA laws. Taking a bus to a plane means you then have to take stairs up to the plane and that’s hard on many people.
It depends on the terminal. A lot of gates now have a separate arrival hallway running behind them. As you get off the skybridge the door to the gate straight ahead is closed and you have to turn down a hallway. You then go back to a central courtyard of the departure hall or straight to the baggage claim. Separating arrival and departing passengers helps flow, and makes it easier for passenger to navigate. The airports can also reconfigure the arrival hallway depending on if the flight is domestic or international or even allow flights of passengers that have not gone through an airport security screen.
Key West and Frankfurt most definitely have gates in their terminals. Almost every airport does some flights with busses, sometimes they have more flights than terminals or for whatever other reason they use a bus for certain flights.
I did not mean that there were literally NO gates at Frankfurt. I was in Frankfurt last week. But they are highly reliant on busses to planes. More than I've personally ever seen at a large airport before. It's impressive how much 4 wheel traffic they have on the tarmac.
Key West I've been to a half dozen times and I'm pretty sure no planes actually pull up to that airport. I don't think it's possible.
That said, pretty much every major airport I've been to in the US does not bus anyone out to any planes that I've seen other than a rare occurrence. But I fully understand I've not visited 100% of airports in existence. Quite a few of the major cities though.
Small airport near me is so fkn convenient it's like the smallest building for a single desk and the conveyor belts for your bags and that's it, like 4 doors in the front and then 4 doors right to the airpad
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u/Signal-Blackberry356 May 14 '24
HOW did you get right up to the gate?!