{"id":1321,"date":"2022-05-08T21:48:31","date_gmt":"2022-05-08T19:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=1321"},"modified":"2022-05-08T21:48:31","modified_gmt":"2022-05-08T19:48:31","slug":"that-was-the-week-that-was-02-06-may-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=1321","title":{"rendered":"That Was The Week That Was 02-06 May 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>More Airport Blues<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It seems that last week\u2019s discussion touched a nerve.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Who knew that airport designers would be just like the pilots?&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The second group of letters were about the serpentine approach airports now require you to take to get to the gate via shops.&nbsp; This one is harder.&nbsp; As I have noted before, in the USSA \u2013 United Soviet States of America \u2013 100% true for airports \u2013 prove me wrong \u2013 the good old advertising slogan \u2018In communist countries you do not have advertising to annoy you\u2019 \u2013 yes true.&nbsp; It was a campaign in Australia a couple of decades or so back \u2013 can be rewritten as in the USSA you do not have shops to annoy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The third group of comments focused on the awfulness of bus transfers.&nbsp; 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!&nbsp; And the discussion about bus transfers inevitably led to a conversation about bus hell \u2013 Dulles Airport in Washington DC (yes, ok not strictly in DC but you know what I mean).&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The plan was so sensible, or at least supportable.&nbsp; You can imagine the architect pitching it to the board, sounding sensible, future looking and even revolutionary.&nbsp; Why have a huge airport building that needed all that space for aircraft to dock against?&nbsp; Why not have a compact (and in Dulles\u2019 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.&nbsp; Better still, do not call them buses.&nbsp; No, these are to be called \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theburn.com\/2020\/08\/01\/mobile-lounges-keep-dulles-internationals-past-alive\/\">People Movers<\/a>\u2019.&nbsp; The problem that aircraft doors are two or so stories high could be solved by having buses that operated at that level!&nbsp; It seemed so ingenious.&nbsp; The old buses on storks are gone now, sadly.&nbsp; They were first replaced by buses that went up and down, like a catering truck.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More Airport Blues It seems that last week\u2019s discussion touched a nerve.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Who knew that airport designers would be just like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1322,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321\/revisions\/1322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}