Do the people who design airports ever fly? | Hacker News Reader

Do the people who design airports ever fly?

anncoulter.substack.com

10 pointsassttoasstmgr17 comments

Wait until Ms. Coulter hears about the architects who design hospitals!

But really: this reeks of motivated reasoning. It was very fast to get to your gate in the old terminal, but it took forever to get though check-in and security. In the new terminal, it takes very little time to get through the latter, and slightly more time to get through the former.

I am predisposed to dislike the new LGA terminal. But having actually used it a handful of times this year, it was an overwhelmingly positive experience compared to the old.

I didn’t realize this was the crazy who wrote this article. Wish I hadn’t clicked it.

I was expecting some actual thought about the subject of airport design, but this is more like a long tweet.

Is there some article about this kind of topic from someone with some good architectural insights? Maybe with some historical insights as well as how and why airport design might have changed over the years? Maybe with some insights on which airports DO work well and why?

That is the article I’d want to read.

A couple weeks ago the Raido Spatkauf podcast series "how to fuck up an airport" was on the front page here. If you missed it then, I'd strongly recommend checking it out. It touches on a lot of the conflicting motivations driving airport design, as well as a lot of other interesting anecdotes from the construction of BER.

Cool thanks a lot. I will listen to it

How much can you do, given that terminals are physically far apart? I figured that the stores are pretty much taking up space that would otherwise be unused- but still there. If I’m stuck at an airport, I’d rather have more dining options than less. Airports with more restaurants tend to have better prices for the food as well.

People movers are faster than walking, maybe shuttles should be more common?

I don’t love everything about the new LaGuardia but it’s the way airport designs are going. A lot of it is done to prevent overcrowding at gates and around the terminal. It takes you longer to get from your car to the plane because the airports (and the airlines) want it to take longer.

Sure, it took five minutes to get from the car to the plane at the old LaGuardia but you showed up two hours before your flight so now you’re just sitting in a leaky ceiling glorified closet.

And walking through a shopping mall after security is nothing new. Just fly through any non-US airport and the first thing after security is a meandering path thru duty free.

Anyway, I think there are certain travelers (myself included) that spend a ton of time on airplanes and we try to minimize our time in airports. That isn’t the general public though.

I don't really think airport design matters as much as people doing the checks.

Just flew from Prague to Sofia and both airports were very fast to pass through, in Prague with online check in, just scan boarding pad to get through gate, go to passport check, then walk through unnecessary shops to security check right at the gate and wait for flight work my kid playing in kid corner with water fountain and toilet nearby plus free wifi, everything I need. Both checks took minutes with max 2-3 people in front of me.

Immigration in Bulgaria also quite fast, officially landed 14:50, in less than an hour have been in central bus station 15 subway stations away including one transfer. Though not sure whose idea was to paint navigation to subway in airport as line on floor, while I'm looking for signs above. Also can't swipe one bank card at same turnstile for more passengers, I can understand why, but it should be communicated better than Invalid card, it should say Use another turnstile or card.

Do people who write software ever use computers? Software sucks!

Knowing what good looks like and getting there are two different things. There's tradeoffs, constraints etc. Not knowing the objective function is rarely the issue.

Airports are so crazy expensive that they'd better have some extra ROI.

So they are designed as malls because that's what the architects are asked for.

Malls with eventually a plane at the end of the corridor.

This

Everything in the US (and eventually most other places) has been formed by the logic of capital. So of course airports try to make your way to the gate as long as possible, so that you buy shit you don’t need.

Think about what in your life has not been defined by the logic of capital.

I find in the US there are at least a few airports that AREN'T malls, or are small malls. In Europe every last airport is a huge mall with special delaying tactics to get you to spend more time around the stores. Even regional ones are starting to be malls.

That's probably because a bunch of US airports are too old, and predate designing airports as malls to make sense, but still.

Felt like I’d walked to DFW by the time I got to my gate in the new SFO Terminal 1. Apparently Mall of America moved in an you have to walk through it first.

Do the people who design airports ever fly commercial? Flying private doesn't count.

In which a minor right-wing ideologue feints as if to have a discussion about airport design and optimization and conflicting goals between airline operators and airport operators but instead merely implores god to intervene and privatize airports.

> In which a minor right-wing ideologue feints

This is ad-hominem

> implores god to intervene and privatize airports

This however might help, IFF competition is allowed to happen between nearby airports.

For example, around Washington DC, Dulles is horrible, Reagan is a pleasure: efficient, with short security lanes and very little walking required.

Around 2015, when I was in university and lived nearby I can tell you from experience that at Reagan, 20 to 30min was all you needed to get to the gate, even if it was crowded, even if you didn't have Pre.

At Dulles, even if everything went your way, you needed at least that much time to get from the entrance to the gate, given the horrible maze the Dulles airport was. Even 1h was cutting it short and taking risks.

However, both are part of the MWAA (Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority) which tries is best to reduce the attractivity of Reagan, by diverting the profits it generates to Dulles, by reducing Reagan flight slots and giving them to Dulles etc.

With privatization, horrible airports might be replaced by good ones if they can go bankrupt, even if I doubt politicians would let that happen.

It isn't, none of what I said was an attack on her. She's not a particularly prominent conservative thought leader at this time, she's right of center and seems to satisfy the definition of an ideologue (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ideologu...), which isn't a pejorative term, anyway.

What she isn't, however, is an architect, designer, business analyst or some other flavor of academic specializing in transit, and I think this is reflected by the extremely shallow nature of the rant she makes, which completely lacks analysis, depth or even handed consideration about why an airport might be designed to sprawl.

I also wouldn't rush to assume that private airports wouldn't just optimize for extraction of money from the individuals they host. That is in my opinion naive.

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