At the airport they have different terminals for different airlines, with flights leaving from all over the place. Why not have a simpler system, where all the flights to Chicago leave from one section of the airport, all the flights to L.A. leave from another section, and so forth? Then you could buy a “ticket to Chicago”–no airline specified–and then just go to the gate and get on the next flight to the Windy City.
The analogy is the supermarket, where products are organized by what they are, not who manufactures them. If the supermarket were like the airport, they’d have all the Proctor & Gamble products in the same place, and so forth. Or imagine a bookstore where the books were arranged by publisher and you had to look at the Random House books, then the Knopf books. etc. That’s what it’s like going to the airport, with the extra thrill of having occasional flight delays.
One could argue that flying waste so much fuel that anything that makes air travel more of a hassle is a good idea, and maybe that’s true. If so, it’s the only argument I know in favor of the current system.
Airports, grocery stores, and book stores are all content to have us linger. Getting us out the door efficiently is probably not a top priority. In each case, prize real estate is allocated to companies paying a premium for that real estate.
The current system may actually work well, at least in certain hub airports where it is convenient that connecting flights on the same airline tend to be clustered nearby. The consumer has more control over getting to the first flight on time. It is when making a connection that distance between gates really matters.
An airport is not like a supermarket where the owner of the facility is buying then reselling products from many suppliers.
It is more like a flea market where the owner of the facility allows suppliers to rent space to sell their own products.
An airport isn't a grocery store. It's a "Farmer's Market". It's not just the connecting flights (a great point), but also all the supporting airline functions. An airline has way more people working on the ground than in the air. Imagine what would happen to your luggage if airlines had to send the "guys" and the little baggage cart trains all over the airport to collect and deliver luggage — let alone all the other support functions that benefit from economies of scale (we can hope) by having all the ground support at connected gates in the same terminal.
Will it increase the cost of operation substantially if the plane of the same airline spread around different terminals rather than concentrated in one?
Well, airports are weird things, but I would guess that it has something to do with coordinating airline personnel. There's a lot more movement of airline staff between terminals than passengers between different airlines. Also, there's an obvious reason why you buy a ticket to Chicago with *American Airlines* instead of just a ticket to Chicago: airlines couldn't compete on price if you just bought a ticket to a destination.
Luggage makes things a little more complicated — they need time to xray it, search it, load it, etc. Connecting flights make things a lot more complicated — flights are organized by the next destination, not your intended final destination. (Do you have to figure out the transfers yourself, like with public transit?) And it's nice for all of the Continental flights to be nearby one another when you jump off one plane and need to make a quick transfer to your next one, not that this always happens so nicely.
Even in a supermarket, goods aren't exactly commodities. You don't buy, I don't know, "a box of spaghetti". You go to the aisle, look at all the brands and prices, then pick one out. Is that what you have in mind for air travel?
Now I do agree that flying would be much more convenient if it were more like, say, train or bus travel — instead of showing up 2 hours in advance, you arrive and then grab a ticket for the next one out. (Maybe even buy a ticket for an included transfer). But this doesn't have to do with the layout of the airport — at least, it doesn't have to do with putting all the flights to Chicago together.
Actually, in my experience, at small airports you often can just show up half an hour in advance, go through security in a minute, and hop on the plane. For some reason airports seem to scale up very inefficiently…
I guess it's for the sake of the flight crew. If the flight crew always leave from the samish gate then they can have their resting rooms nearby. And so they have less time traipsing around the airport.
They are the ones that are going to the gates the oftenest so I guess it makes sense to give them the greatest convenience.
Can you imagine the announcement… "Sorry for the delay in boarding, the pilots have been unable to find the right gate!."
It's a bad analogy — airports sell one thing and grocery stores sell many. A better analogy would be the way particular items or narrow categories of items are sold at grocery stores; it's just like an airport. Take pasta sauce, for example. When I enter the pasta sauce area at my local store, the first thing I see is all the Ragu varities — garlic & onion, three cheese, hearty garden, etc. Then I see the Prego varities, many of which have direct Ragu counterparts. Then I see Bertolli, and so on. I went in there for a roasted red pepper sauce, but instead of finding all the roasted red pepper jars shelved right next to each other, I have to look up and down the whole aisle to compare them all.
The airlines have their support staff on the ground, which cannot be scattered all over the place, so the terminals are primarily associated with companies rather than places.
From the perspective of a passenger – he can just as quickly find the right terminal by airline as he would by a location.
Now, there is price differentiation – some terminals are more convenient than others. It would be upsetting for many people to travel to Tier 1 cities sitting at comfortable terminals and Tier 4 cities waiting sitting on the ground. This is easier to accept with airlines.
Foyles (London bookshop) used to organise its shelves in exactly this way, made customers queue three times to buy a book, _and_ flew a flag outside proclaiming itself "the greatest bookshop in the world".
And the situation in grocery stores isn't so obvious. Check the salty snack and soft drink aisles – in most stores, you'll see all the Frito-Lay products together, all the Coke products together, etc., rather than being sorted by type (e.g., all potato chips from all manufacturers together, all cola drinks together). The manufacturers pay for shelf space, making them customers in a different sense than you or me, and the stores accommodate them.
Aleks has a good point on support staff. I would extend it with the note that, while the passenger is the airline's customer, the airline is the airport's customer. I would expect airport management to aim towards the airlines' convenience, and I rarely hear any passenger demand for re-arranging the terminals. I also imagine mostly government-run airports, planned in a previous generation around a few large units (airlines), with great inertia to overcome in rearranging everything. Once you have an industry standard, deviation takes even more effort.
As others have said, the situation isn't exactly comparable. It also is probably beneficial to us as fliers, because by "owning" the area in the terminal an airline has an incentive to improve the area–with things like wifi, easier access to their customer service, etc. I am uncertain of how the issue with shops work, but I imagine this may factor in as well.
This doesn't keep others from coming to their terminal to wait, but it does help encourage people to fly their airline.
If you have a "common area" for each destination, what you get instead is a phenomena where it is unlikely any one airline views that area as "theirs," and thus they are (just guessing here) less likely to want to want to improve it overmuch since a relatively poor situation won't reflect on them. Top tier destinations would get natural preference in expenditure as well, meaning that flying would be even more unpleasant if going to a small destination than it might be otherwise.
The idea of saying "just buy a ticket and go" is akin to the rail situation in Tokyo. While it has strong merits for that kind of system, air travel–as much as it is commoditized–has several carriers trying to differentiate themselves through a variety of mechanisms. Until the carriers stop trying to differentiate themselves, I can't really see such as system working.
As Bob noted, a manufacturer's products within a category are typically shelved together, with the specific shelf space assigned by the retailer.
This is a necessity for direct store delivered items, to keep the delivery personnel from informally expanding their space. It's often used in warehoused departments as well. You might see all the Kellogg cereals together, all the GMI cereals together, etc. OR you may see all the adult Kellogg Cereals together, all the GMI adult cereals together, and then next to them all the Kellogg children's cereals, then all the GMI children's cereals. In that way, it is easier to find space for a new product from, say GMI. Just find the lowest selling GMI product you currently carry, and discontinue it. Let GMI personnel reset the shelves for you.
The answer to this question, and the airport question, is logistics. For example, the jetway driver(s) seem to work for the airline, and they need to handle multiple jetways, so there are fewer drivers if the jetways for each airline are together. Similarly for baggage trucks, check-in personnel, etc.
Similarly, universities tend to organize by department/college to minimize logistic hassles. In theory, you could have a building with all gigantic offices, concierge service, and an on-site spa for the professors with endowed chairs and big grants, big offices for the tenured faculty, and unheated warehouse space in Brooklyn for the graduate students. But that doesn't maximize the logistics the university is trying to maximize.
ZBicyclist: I hate to tell you, but the description of the university in your last paragraph is pretty close to correct!
To the others: Thanks for pointing out all the reasons it can be more efficient for airports to be organized by airline rather than destination. That said, I still think it would be preferable to be able to go to the "Chicago" gate and get on the next place to Chicago, etc. I think the benefits from this in time saved waiting and flexibility in travel would be well worth the extra costs in shuttling people to connections (which would not be under such time pressure under my system), moving baggage around, reduction of competition (such as it is) among airlines, taxis for the flight crews, etc.
Air transport of people does not waste fuel, not compared to automobiles. Barges, maybe. But not cars. For example, a Boeing 747 burns about one gallon (4 liters) of fuel per second and can carry more than 500 passengers. It cruises at 560 mi/hr (900 km/hr). The rest is left as an exercise for the reader.
John P,
Looking just at the cruise phase is a cheat, because planes use fuel at a much faster rate in takeoff and climbing. Still, it's true that on average planes get about 50 passenger-miles per gallon, which isn't so bad. But (1) as Andrew pointed out when discussing walking vs driving, you can't just compare car mileage to plane mileage because if you're flying, you go a lot farther. Lots of people fly more than 25,000 miles per year but very few people drive that far. And (2) climate researchers say you have to multiply the airplane fuel use by some (unknown) number between 2 and 3.5 compare to the impact of ground-level fuel use…admittedly this isn't a "fuel waste" issue, but it's still relevant.
Exactly. If flying weren't an option, I wouldn't have gone to California last week. It's not like I would've driven a car there instead. And, once I was there, I was personally responsible for a lot of additional car driving as well.
On the efficiency of flying:
It's my understanding that per person mile traveled, flying is more efficient than driving alone in a car. Around the equivalent of 100 person miles per gallon??? I am sure this depends on a variety of things, but for a first order approximation you can see here
Andrew wrote (and I edited)
I still think it would be preferable to be able to go to the "Chicago" gate and get on the next plane to Chicago
Depends what airline or airplaine it is. I'd be a bit wary of Uzbekistan Airways.