(avgeekery follows)
Southwest used to do this with jetbridges – at least for deplaning – at AUS. One of the jetbridges was suspended over the wing to the aft door. (When I went thru there a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t notice whether they were still doing this or not.)
We had a World Book encyclopedia in which the “Airport” article had the still-new Kansas City Int’l. as an example of a modern airport. The illustrations showed the aircraft parked alongside each gate, rather than pointed nose-in, allowing one jetbridge to telescope to the forward door and another jetbridge to telescope aft. (The aircraft in the illustrations were Caravelles so it was already a bit dated when I first read it in 1980.) I’ve only been thru MCI once, and didn’t notice them doing it this way when I was there. (EDIT: World Book also showed an inter-city train and an intra-airport peoplemover, and I’m pretty sure MCI never had either.)
It used to be routine (maybe still is, somewhere) at larger airports, for larger aircraft (e.g. 747s, DC-10s), to put one jetbridge at the forward door for loading 1st class, and a second one at the 2nd door (still fore of the wing) for the rest of us rabble – I know that at DFW, this evolved into just parking two smaller airliners (e.g. MD80s) at both jetbridges, and re-labeling the single gate number as “A” and “B”. But I think maybe it’s still common to use a middle door instead of the 1st door for a widebody.
American had one of their gates set up at LAX (and, if I recall, at JFK) so that the 747 had one jetbridge on a port door, and one on starboard – but I don’t remember whether they actually used this configuration.
We’ll use Voya-Code!
(I had to go look that up; I read it while Carter was still president)
