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Comment by TylerE | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone ever tried to build an airport where the terminals and actual flight ops area was miles away (noise, etc).

Basically I'm picturing something like an urban train station (plus TSA, and customs) that would be located downtown. This is where you'd have check-in, security, baggage claim, etc. After clearing security, you'd get on some sort of rail transit (monorail, maglev, subway, whatever, doesn't matter THAT much as long as it can get out to the flight area in 10-15 minutes.

Basically put the people bits where it's convenient, and the noisy stuff where it isn't.

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One problem is that this plan is bad for everyone in the half of metro closer to airport or coming from other direction. They would have to go out of their way. Or the airport would need checkin facilities, then what is the point of the downtown check in.

The other problem is that regular trains are better because they stop at intermediate stations and can run more frequently because serving regular traffic. The Elizabeth Line is better than the Heathrow Express.

The only way I can see it being advantage is the check in and security is done on the train. That would save time, But that would require a train twice the size with pre and post security areas, and luggage space.

What's the benefit of having security outside the airport?

There are tons of airports that connect to cities by rail transit. Within the recent past, I've been in three of them, PVG, HKG, and KHH. In no case do they put security outside the airport.

For one thing, subway lines have multiple stops. In order to make sure that everyone who's going to the airport has to go through security, you'd want security to occur after the last stop before the airport... and the site after the last stop before the airport is the airport.

For another thing, why would you want to subject people who aren't going to the airport to airport security?

When was the last time you thought "this check-in process would be better if it took up a lot of space in the city center, even though the time requirements wouldn't change"?

Now, rail transit to PVG takes multiple hours. But if you replaced the subway connection with a dedicated rail line with one stop in the city center and one at the airport, that wouldn't help much - that just means that people living nearer to the airport have to travel backwards to the city center, subject to the speed of the subway, so they can take the dedicated airport express to the airport.

The point of doing it this way is that the secure perimeter would extended all the way to the central station. That's the whole idea. Essentially, this urban hub is "the airport" in terms of traveling to it. Think of the actual hub -> board gates/runway connections as like a really long people mover, not just extending a subway line and drawing a new dot.

Trains could travel on a totally grade separated route with strict access controls. Having the last mile part of the train journey controlled by the airport instead of some civic transit authority would allow for a much more reliable system, since they would be insulated from disruption to the larger system, and could also make situation specific choices for optimization.

For instance: Compared to standard transit, many people will be bringing carry on luggage... so probably best to scale everything up maybe 25%...physically make the car wider. Wider doors, wider aisles. Luggage racks everywhere... maybe to a standard width but only have two seats on one side, and luggage rack on the other.

How do you exit? Do you take a train back to city center, or do you have an option to exit near the runways? I wonder if you'd end up with multiple entry points with this model.

You likely would. The simplest example would be a high-speed train that connected two airports (either two existing, or an old and new). You could imagine a high-speed subway that connected JFK to EWR that was about 30 minutes or less. Now you don't have to work out how to get to a specific airport, you get to the closest one.

For people without luggage, the difference is minor; but if you are checking bags it would be a huge advantage to dump your bags as soon as possible.

The trouble with this plan is that downtown land is more expensive than rural land. The land area you need to efficiently build the check-in facilities will be similar whether you put it on site or away from the airport. So you'd spend more for the off-site and then still have to build a people mover that provides zero benefit to anyone not going to and from the airport.

It makes far more sense to build the airport far away and add a public rail service to it that can also serve non-airport passengers.

In an urban environment you can build UP. Airports avoid structure over 40 or 50ft to avoid interfering with the controllers visibility.

Instead of having one giant check in hall you could have one floor per airline, for instance.

Airports because of noise have plenty of space nobody else wants so building out isn't an issue.

The exact issue under discussion is "We can't build airports where people can get to them because of how big loud and annoying they are". I am proposing a mitigation aka problem solving.

That isn't a mitigation as making them smaller is not an option. They need to be large becouse of noise.

> The point of doing it this way is that the secure perimeter would extended all the way to the central station. That's the whole idea.

You forgot to describe any benefit of this idea.

I love this idea. Hong Kong has something kinda like this with bag check in town, and then a train to the airport. It's extremely convenient

Are there any other major international airports in the world that have the equivalent setup of Hongkong? For other readers: There is a fast-but-not-high-speed direct train from city centre to the airport. At the city terminal, there are tiny airline checkin booths where you can leave your bags. Magically, they are transported to the airport.

I remember flying into Germany once, my ticket including the train, and my luggage having been sent on ahead to the Lufthansa terminal at the other end.

(I forget which city now, maybe Frankfurt?)

It was very cool except for the part where it was apparently so normal that they'd keep responsibility for your luggage that there wasn't (that I noticed, at least) any warning that was going to happen. I spent a while at baggage claim going wtf and eventually found a desk with somebody who took pity on me and explained.

A+ would use service again now I know how it works.

Yes, TPE in Taiwan has the same setup. At Taipei Main Station in the city center, there are airline checkin kiosks and bag drops. You take the train to the airport, and your bags are ingested into the baggage system for you.

https://www.tymetro.com.tw/tymetro-new/en/_pages/checkin/ind...

There are companies selling it: https://amadeus.com/en/portfolio/airports/off-airport-check-... but I've not seen anything as remote as Hong Kong.

I seem to remember Japan would let you check your luggage at the hotel and they'd handle a freight forwarder to your next hotel, which is not quite the same thing but related.

The Heathrow Express used to have this at Paddington station, though I think it closed a while ago.

A similar idea which is available in London though is Airportr - this is a company which will send someone to collect your bags from your home/hotel and then inject them directly into the airport baggage system for you (if you're flying with the right airlines and checked in online). I've used it a few times and it's very good.

I'm not sure what you'd really gain. As it is, you can check-in online and I'm mostly just going straight to TSA Pre-check. It's all a trivial part of the airport infrastructure. And there are a bunch of reasons to have gates that you actually board the planes from.

Convenient drop off in town instead of having to drive 45 minutes, and then pay to park your car. By placing all the security stuff at the 'town end', that would also allow for things like lounges, etc. The actual terminals could be very compact since you wouldn't head out there until it's almost time. Could use a small-vehicle people mover type system... imagine scanning a boarding pass when you get on the vehicle, and instead of dropping you at a central station, it dropped you right at your gate?

In town is only convenient if you live in town or are visiting there. Where's the parking? Where's the rental car service? The actual terminals are a pretty trivial part of the total airport area.

Not to be trite, but "people who live here, or people who are traveling here" is sort of their target market.

So now you'll have the in-city checkin version and the in-airport checkin version? Because you definitely need parking and rental cars somewhere convenient. "Here" means a greater area serviced by a large airport which is a lot more than a city.

There probably would even be a market for an in-city bag drop service. But it wouldn't replace people driving to the airport.

If the airport wasn’t way outside town, many of those people wouldn’t need to park, as they could just take public transit or an Uber, and the same would also mean that many people traveling in won’t need to rent a car.

In the us transit isn't normally good enough. most people rent a car. I wish that would change.

I pretty much never rent a car if I'm going into a city. But I'm often not actually going into the city that an airport services.

Heck, I drive most places (disclaimer: I mean "actual cities" here) in my own car, but I'll just leave it at the hotel and get around via Uber primarily, but I'll happily use subway or light rail or something like that when it's available and the end points are close. I have somewhat limited mobility these days so I can't just trek 10 or 12 blocks at both ends of every journey like I know some of y'all do in places like Seattle, but anything up to 4 or 5 blocks I can manage unless it's extremely hot.

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