Many of you zeroed in on luggage as the prime culprit, so I'll start with a general reply on that subject, then move on to what other commenters mentioned.

I agree that luggage is main reason why boarding a plane is such a pain. I'll plead guilty to being a luggage-in-the-overhead guy myself -- in the past, anyway. But, praise the Lord, I have changed my ways.

Why was I an overhead packrat and why did I change? I used to use the overhead because I can get by with fairly small bags for an entire trip; I used to do three-week European trips using a bag that would fit in the bin plus a shoulder-bag. The wait and hassle of waiting for luggage at the carousel was another factor. But the most important reason was fear that my luggage would get lost.

I changed over to checking my luggage for two reasons. First, bar-code based luggage tracking seems to have reduced the risk of loss. Second, tighter security checking since 9/11 had made it a hassle to run luggage through the inspection. I used to get my luggage opened because I had a tiny pair of blunt-ended baby scissors in my odds 'n' ends carrying plastic box. Checking the luggage eliminates the inspection pain; if my bag gets inspected (and it does from time to time), that happens off-stage.

I have no solution to the luggage problem aside from changes in regulations or airline policies.

And I might add that winter flying when bulky coats and jackets go into the bins only makes the stowage problem worse, but I see no cure at all for this aside from freeing up a row or two of seats for a coat closet (fat chance).

Peter -- JetBlue does seem to be a sensibly-run airline. I think the additional personnel are not security-related, but are there for passenger safety -- making sure no one strays too near the engines or other places where trouble can happen. True, personnel cost money and airlines have no balance money saved via faster turnaround against cost of extra workers to run the stairs.

Friedrich -- Interesting that Burbank and Long Beach still use stairs too -- maybe it's a California/pleasant climate thing. Umm, Orange County (John Wayne) Airport doesn't use stairs, and it's in the neighborhood. I've flown into more than 50 airports over the last 30 years or so and all but the tiniest used ramps aside from San Jose and (through the 70s) Albany, NY.

Yes airports are a funny sort of beast. To be fair, the rule is that they grow incrementally, never quite escaping what was built in past years. Matter of fact, the busier airports seem to be perpetually under construction. Seldom (in the USA anyhow) is an airport designed and built from scratch. Now I have great respect for empirical knowledge and I once planned to write a book about how, absent great technological changes, things fall into a "best" shape or form -- consider how little the belt buckle has changed over centuries. There should be such knowledge regarding terminals. I don't see gross differnces in functions between train stations and airports; people need to have places to enter and leave, to buy tickets, to sit and wait, to eat and use the bathroom, etc.

So it seems odd that "greenfield" jet-era airports so often appear to be so screwed up in spite of the accumulated knowledge; architects and planners seem bent on trying untested theories instead of refining what worked in the past. The super-space-agey original drum-shaped part of Paris' Charles de Gaulle is a confusing mess so far as I'm concerned. I've only flown in and out of the new Denver airport once, but the baggage system seems to be a failure according to one comment here. Dallas-Ft. Worth is huge, but seems to work okay when changing planes for one airline; I've never originated or terminated a flight there. Ditto Kansas City. I'll discuss Dulles Airport in reply to Benjamin's comment shortly.

Jonathan -- Interesting idea. Why not pass it along to the airlines, starting with FedEx, DHL and UPS.

Benjamin -- I'll replay to a couple points of the vast feast you provided for our thought.

Back in the early 60s I sometimes drove over to Idlewild (as it was then) to entertain myself. In those days it was easy to park, easy to figure out and easy to get from one terminal to another (I was sans luggage, natch). One fun thing was looking at all those 707s and DC-8s with livery of foreign airlines. Today the place strikes me as chaotic, though the people-mover train is a huge benefit for getting from terminal to terminal and from the airport to the subway system. Last year we flew to/from Athens on Delta which incorporated the old Pan Am terminal in their complex (they also took over many of Pan Am's European routes); I could barely recognize the old building.

As for Dulles, Saarinen did latch onto the mobile lounge concept, but in the back of my skull I recall that one or two European arports were using them too. I forget the details and can't say who was first.

Anyway, I hated the things. They added a lot of unnecessary time to the emplane/deplane process simply traversing the tarmac from the main terminal to the aircraft. And this is not to mention the time spent on the plane on arrival waiting for the next lounge to arrive once one was filled and on its way.

Things had changed the last time I was there (2001). They still had the mobile lounges, but they went from docks in the main termimal to docks on one or another of two conventional linear satellite terminals located where the planes used to arrive and get serviced in the old days. In other words, you went to the main terminal for ticketing/check-in, took the lounge to a regular gate segment with all the normal gateside amenities (newstands, souvenir shops, Burger King, etc.) I call it an improvement, but an underground people-mover belt would be more convenient still.

By the way, the underground thing was what United had at LAX. The dual-entry I mentioned in the main posting was at San Francisco. I don't yet have a scanner, so I couldn't illustrate it (couldn't quikly find a pic on the Web, either).

Posted by: Donald Pittenger on November 7, 2005 11:31 PM

For me, the problem isn't so much long boarding times as it is long deboarding times. After all, you're supposed to arrive an hour before the flight; you might as well get on the plane. My father in law, who has travelled extensively, says it's a problem unique to the west. Everywhere else, they pull up a stairway to each door, and everyone deplanes in 30 seconds or so. Here, with only one door open, it takes forever.

Posted by: dave munger on November 8, 2005 5:36 AM

Re.: Deboarding.
Why don't the airlines combine fun with education with deboarding?
All deboarding should be done by the terminals but without the use of the extended nozzle jutting out from the terminal allowing only exit trhough the one front door.
Use the emergency exits.
Employ the emergency slides. (this will also discourage folks from inflicting carry-ons of mammoth sizes upon the rest of us air travellers)
Have shuttle buses readily available. And, if you really want to thrill the passengers, tie in with the Segway folks and have personal carriers available for a nominal rental fee. Cute little baggage carriers on the sides and off you scoot/go. Sugueing to your next destination.

Exiting the plane in this fashion will give a passenger a good feeling about the efficacy of the emergency exit system. And if you're travelling with kids?? What better way to end the trip than with a (free) slide ride.

The best part? You don't have to exchange the obligatory good-byes with the pilots, who'd much rather be transporting non-human, non-talking, non-complaining steerage anyway.

Posted by: DarkoV on November 8, 2005 10:56 AM

DarkoV's comment reminds me that the first time I took an airplane ride I was about three or four years old -- which was old enough to know that I was on something that flew in the air, but young enough to know about air travel only what I'd seen on TV. Thus, I was not knowledgeable enough to know the difference between a plane and a ("Flash Gordon") rocket ship or between a routine plane trip and an unusual one. So I thought ALL airplane flights ended with crew and passengers nonchanlantly bracing themselves for a rough "crashlanding" [one word] and then running as quickly as they could to get far enough away to be safe in case the thing actually blew up! In other words, I thought airplanes had essentially one-trip lifespans -- i.e., were disposables.

(To make this world view seem a little more understandable, in the early- mid-1950s we use to take ferries a lot, and, in the New York City area at least, large ferries seem to be designed to stop themselves by "crashing" (very noisly and with more than bumper car violence) a few times into these giant wooden bumpers that use the momentum of the ferry to eventually guide one end of the boat into a dock.)

- - - - -

While I'm not familiar enough with airports worldwide to comment on their mistakes, the mistakes at Idelwild/JFK seem reasonable to me.

1) There do seem to be some significant differences between air and train travel that would have required the development of some new, and therefore untested, approaches to the design of airplane terminals. Trains, for instance, can actually go inside of a train terminal and they also easily sidle-up to island platforms (themselves an innovation from about 1910 or so) which can accommodate ALL the doors of a train at the very same time.

2) There have been significant changes in the nature of air travel that have made the Idelwild/JFK set-up (which was probably intelligent for the late 1950s) obsolete -- and also a concept that is very difficult to to successfully retrofit. For instance, I believe jumbo jets could not fit underneath the Pan Am umbrella. And JFK was built before the shift to mass hub and spoke air travel (where changing planes became the norm). So its system of relatively small, discrete terminals for individual airlines became dysfunctional in this new age of air travel.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Interesting to hear what eventually happened to the mobile lounges at Dulles!

I'll have to look this up, but I got the impression that Saarineen's office virtually invented the mobile lounge specificially for Dulles -- or, at least, that's the impression that was given in the architectural press at the time. I believe Saarineen gave interviews where he talked proudly about developing the idea of the moblie lounge and how these were the largest things of their type ever built.

In any case, it seems like a very "Saarineen" kind of thing to do. At his TWA Terminal at Idelwild he originally designed moving walkways for the long space-agey "tubes" connecting the "butterfly" concourse with the outlying embarcation / disembarcation "pods." (The moving walkways were dropped because, I believe, they were seen as too expensive at the time.)

- - - - - -

In the late 1980s and early 1990s I flew into San Bernardino airport (actually it's the Ontario, Calif. airport), and to my surprise and delight they also used roll-up to the plane stairways.

Posted by: Benjamin Hemric on November 8, 2005 2:44 PM

Hi-

Two comments:

In western Canada, WestJet uses double ramps at the Calgary and Vancouver airports. I was once nicely surprised by an attendant directing me to the back of the plane, where I was able to get off and out in no time at all. The setup is the same as a single ramp, but with a longer corridor paralelling the plane to reach the 'back' door.

The Globe and Mail just recently published an article about (again) WestJet, which was experimenting with boarding procedures and appears to have come to the conclusion that random is best. Apparently they gave their staff free reign (it's a pretty 'folksy' airline) and one of their gate agents tried boarding a plane by sock colour, which worked wonders. Perhaps this is akin to the chaotic, but low-collision traffic patterns one can observe in Asian cities. Keep in mind that WestJet doesn't have business class or any other distinctions. Though why business class passengers would wish to sit first and then be bombarded by a parade of riffraff swinging their coats, bags, and children around on their way to the back of the plane has always mystified me. I generally prefer to wait until the last possible minute (if I can grab a coffee or a beer during this time, so much the better) and not wait in any kind of line at all.

Enjoying the fun...

Desmond

Posted by: Desmond Bliek on November 8, 2005 5:09 PM






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