Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/18/why-airport-gates-are-so-damn.html
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Without watching yet, I’d surmise because airlines are evil and airport landlords are worse.
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And I’d assume planes don’t have great turning radii. 
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Largely because planes are big, and the mobile lounges (AKA Plane mates) originally used at Dulles never became popular.
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I miss those beauties:
Dulles completed major renovations recently but, they seriously messed up on how to best move people. Walking for miles…
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I want to know how come there are so many luggage stores and stores selling headphones that never have anybody in them, yet the queues for coffee and food remain epic. Shouldn’t “the market” straighten this out?
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Indeed the original idea was that the mobile lounges would go directly from the gate in the main terminal to the planes. Which allowed the gates in the main terminal to be closely spaced. Somebody once said that Dulles was a train station pretending to be an airport. But then they built the mid-field concourses and used the mobile lounges as big busses to transport passengers to the.concourses.
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They are still used if you are trying to get to concourse D which does not have an AeroTrain station.
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Looking at the aerial picture of the airport on my office wall - I’d guess it’s because jets are big and you need space between them to move them. Also - if you have more than one runway - they’re required to have a certain amount space between them by safety concerns.
It has nothing to do with staff playtime.
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You need to sell 1,000 coffees to match the markup on one Tumi bag.
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Because planes are big. Next week we’re going to teach you how to be an amateur gynecologist…
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wide bodies need wide gates
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No more than 600 meters to walk in China’s new mega hub:
“Nicknamed Starfish by Chinese media for its shape of five concourses connected to a main hall, Daxing aims to reduce walking for passengers, long a complaint about many new mega-hubs. The airport authority has promised a distance of no more than 600 meters (1,968.5 ft) between security checkpoints and the remotest gates.”-steelguru
2000ft:
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What I want to know is why my plane is the one that arrives and leaves from the farthest gate in the terminal…Every. Damn. Time.? And I’m convinced the distance exponentially increases depending on how late we are to make my connection.
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Too far apart?
My gate is always in a corner where there are 3 gates within a 20 foot span. And, of course, two flights are boarding within 5 minutes of each other and the third just pulled up and started de-planing, but its going to board in 20 minutes, so most of those passengers are also in the corner. Three-plus plane-loads of people in the space half the size of a non-corner gate.
PS: Thanks, Southwest.
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Don’t forget that in the Charlotte airport, the gates for Charleston, Charlottesville, and Chattanooga are always close together.
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They used those mobile lounges at Edmonton airport in the mid 1980s. The only place I’ve ever been on one that rolled out and docked with the plane
And the flights for Greenville NC and Greenville SC are next to each other, but they just announce “greenville” when they are boarding
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Why not mini-flights to get you to your flights?
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They have a SYSTEM!
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