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    The Aviation Advocacy Blog

    A cornucopia of news, opinion, views, facts and quirky bits that need to be talked about. Join our community and join in the conversation on all matters aviation. The blog includes our weekly round-up of the bits of European aviation you may otherwise have missed – That Was The Week That Was

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That Was The Week That Was 02-06 May 2022

More Airport Blues

It seems that last week’s discussion touched a nerve.  Responses varied from a very irate airport designer who failed to see that I was having a dig, and told me, in no uncertain terms, that designing airports was difficult work requiring special skills.  Who knew that airport designers would be just like the pilots?  One of the upsides about writing about airports is that at least this week, I was not written to by a pilot (you know who you are) telling me that deep down, so far deep down that I do not know that it is there, actually, I really do want to be a pilot.  Right.

The second group of letters were about the serpentine approach airports now require you to take to get to the gate via shops.  This one is harder.  As I have noted before, in the USSA – United Soviet States of America – 100% true for airports – prove me wrong – the good old advertising slogan ‘In communist countries you do not have advertising to annoy you’ – yes true.  It was a campaign in Australia a couple of decades or so back – can be rewritten as in the USSA you do not have shops to annoy you.

The third group of comments focused on the awfulness of bus transfers.  There is no-one on earth thinks they are a good thing and when the bus takes you away from your destination they are worse!  And the discussion about bus transfers inevitably led to a conversation about bus hell – Dulles Airport in Washington DC (yes, ok not strictly in DC but you know what I mean).  That airport might have single-handedly been the one airport that had an idea so awful that it was not picked up by other airport architects. 

The plan was so sensible, or at least supportable.  You can imagine the architect pitching it to the board, sounding sensible, future looking and even revolutionary.  Why have a huge airport building that needed all that space for aircraft to dock against?  Why not have a compact (and in Dulles’ case very elegant) building that did not need as much heating or lighting, and then have dedicated buses that took the passengers out the aircraft.  Better still, do not call them buses.  No, these are to be called ‘People Movers’.  The problem that aircraft doors are two or so stories high could be solved by having buses that operated at that level!  It seemed so ingenious.  The old buses on storks are gone now, sadly.  They were first replaced by buses that went up and down, like a catering truck.  Now Dulles has airport terminals like all the other airports, but still, sometimes, for old times sake, you can get to them on a people mover.  The buses, sorry, people movers, were inevitably hot, cramped, and uncomfortable, but they did take you to the customs hall, and for that the Aviation Advocacy blog salutes you!

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