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How to fuck up an airport

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Re: How to fuck up an airport

#251

Post by f_allwein »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #237

Airports make 2/3rds of their money by renting space to shops, and the remaining third by allowing planes to fly. They have a strong incentive to be inefficient, so you will feel you need to arrive 2 hours before departure, or even more, because you don't want to risk losing your flight. I flew ~1,000 times, and saw ~300 airports. I could write tens of books on how to make airports better... But the problem is that t…

an interesting exception is Munich airport, which was originally designed to minimise the distance passengers have to take to reach their plane. Well visible here: https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/assets/news_articles/...

Say you arrive by taxi, you would go down the street in the middle, drop off at one of the four check-in areas (the triangular structures), then make your way through check-in and security and you're almost at your plane. The train station is below this structure and in the centre.

This opened in 1992 - Terminal 2, built later, uses a different approach with more shopping etc. along the way =)

Re: How to fuck up an airport

#252

Post by jhugo »

relix wrote: post #235
jhugo wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like flying lufthansa. They have the shortest flight times to Asia from the west coast. Can you elaborate on this? Where do you mean by "west coast"?

If no country is specified you can assume it’s an American talking about their country. So west coast, USA (California or Washington)

I did initially assume that, but then it doesn't make any sense at all. Lufthansa doesn't fly between the US West Coast and Asia except via Europe, and a large number of other airlines offer direct routes between the US West Coast and Asia which are obviously going to be substantially shorter. So... maybe they mean the west coast of some other country?

Re: How to fuck up an airport

#253

Post by te_chris »

f_allwein wrote: post #251
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #237

Airports make 2/3rds of their money by renting space to shops, and the remaining third by allowing planes to fly. They have a strong incentive to be inefficient, so you will feel you need to arrive 2 hours before departure, or even more, because you don't want to risk losing your flight. I flew ~1,000 times, and saw ~300 airports. I could write tens of books on how to make airports better... But the problem is that t…

an interesting exception is Munich airport, which was originally designed to minimise the distance passengers have to take to reach their plane. Well visible here: https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/assets/news_articles/... Say you arrive by taxi, you would go down the street in the middle, drop off at one of the four check-in areas (the triangular structures), then make your way through check-in and security and…

In my experience all German airports are terrible, particularly Munich and BER.

Re: How to fuck up an airport

#255

Post by hadlock »

c0mptonFP wrote: post #185
kriz9 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add two more suggestions here: 1) If you have 50€ to spare always take the taxy to the city center. If you take the train you will hate this airport as much as the one at Frankfurt. You can thank me later. 2) Use security lanes 1 or 5. They are the furthest and less busy. Everyone usually just queues up by the nearest one. Don't trust the indicators.

Imagine having "spare" 50€. Unless you're absolutely rich, you probably shouldn't default to using a cab in a city known for it's amazing public transport.

$50 after walking off a $1200 flight, $60 upgrade to board early, and $12 in cocktails is not a substantial amount. Plus lunch/dinner on the way to/at the airport for $40. And you're gonna pay $8-12 to get downtown via public transit, then make a transfer to a bus and walk two blocks to your hotel. Fifty bucks for a taxi is a lot, but a rounding error on a transatlantic flight/trip, and will drop you off in front of the hotel, might even carry your bags into the lobby for you, or at least load them onto a luggage cart.

Re: How to fuck up an airport

#256

Post by bobthepanda »

p_l wrote: post #173
djhworld wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found it quite novel, checking in and then immediately going through security to your gate behind. A lot of airports are vast complexes and takes you a while to get from A - B, Tegel was quite quaint in comparison! Admittedly for a major/global city - it was too small.

It's something that might trip people up, but due to West/East Germany split and Interflug going under after unification, Berlin airports are peripheral - leaves in flight graph, not hubs except for low cost airlines. Lufthansa continues to use Munich and Frankfurt as hubs.

Also as part of the legacy of the split, Berlin is the only EU capital that has a lower GDP per capita than the country.

Re: How to fuck up an airport

#257

Post by soco »

fdhsbjasvh wrote: post #219
rootusrootus wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brother just went through Schiphol two weeks ago. Scheduled his connecting flight with a five hour layover just to be sure. Took him 5 hours and 20 minutes to make it through security.

Schiphol is insane. I had the same thing happen to me a few months ago. Figured I’d go 5 hrs early just in case. Even without check bags I still missed my flight. I went 7 hrs early the next day and just made it due to departure delays. From what I heard they’re not letting people in until 5 hrs before their departure as the airport became too crowded.

I arrived in Heathrow yesterday 2.5 hours before my flight to a huge queue stretching outside the terminals into the parking lots. Mortifying to see. To my surprise I was past security in about an hour.

Re: How to fuck up an airport

#258

Post by 3D30497420 »

enlyth wrote: post #164
biztos wrote: post #115

Arguably off topic, but having suffered through BER several times, I have a few tips to share which might reduce your own suffering. First: post-security you will find some of the most disgusting food ever served in an airport, but hey it’s also expensive and the servers don’t hide how much they hate being there! However, there is a little shop near the left-side stairs that sells better alcohol as well as soft drink…

I was just there over this weekend, they sold us those 9 eur train tickets saying you can use it for any train anywhere. Then we board the first train that Apple Maps suggested and the first thing we hear from the announcer "9 eur tickets are not valid on this train".

Was the train from BER?

I'm pretty sure any train from BER airport would be covered under the 9-euro ticket. The trains not covered under the ticket are primarily ICE (inter-city high speed) and anything operated by another company (e.g. FlixTrain).

Re: How to fuck up an airport

#259

Post by bobthepanda »

nradov wrote: post #197
Atsuii wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apron buses are very common in large airports and I always found it really efficient. From memory I’ve used them at Haneda, Narita and KL. Perhaps the ones in Germany are just altered metro buses though, which would be terrible. Apron buses are efficient due to being low to the ground, having very wide doors to accomodate quick loading and unloading, typically no seats.

Buses are a lot less efficient than proper jetways. Why are European airports so far behind?

A decent new airport or significant airport reconstruction costs probably $5B+ (DEN cost $4.8B in the 90s; Beijing Daxing cost $11.5B) In austerity-minded Europe there really isn’t money for this. Even if there was, NIMBYs and green campaigners mean there is very little appetite to pursue it politically.

Re: How to fuck up an airport

#260

Post by bobthepanda »

scott_w wrote: post #220
bigDinosaur wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you chase the architect with his insane ideas away when you're getting paid by the hour and the project must be completed at some point because there's no alternative for the government? Unfortunately nobody appears to come off as not corrupt or idiotic in some way in this story.

Because most workers, even though they get paid by the hour, actually want to see the job done. Plenty of people want to do a good job, so when they see someone coming in and adding to the workload to make the job worse they’ll, naturally, tell them to piss off.

There’s also the issue of reputational damage.

Everyone associated with BER is now tainted by association.

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