Modern Living: Curing Terminal Fatigue

Over the loudspeaker in the Pan American terminal at New York City's John F. Kennedy Airport comes word that Flight 92 is now ready to board passengers. Obediently, the ticket holders gather their flight bags and file through the appropriate gate. Instead of finding themselves aboard an airplane, however, the bewildered travelers discover that they have entered what seems to be another waiting lounge, complete with upholstered blue seats and the soothing strains of recorded music. What ever happened to Flight 92 and faraway places? The doors finally close, and up front a dashingly costumed pilot checks the banks of lights on a complex control panel and starts an engine. That brings an even greater surprise: with a muffled groan, the entire room ponderously backs up, turns around and trundles off at the less than jet-age speed of 10 m.p.h. Gradually, it dawns on the occupants that they are in the clutches of a "Plane Mate," one of the three elevated mobile lounges that now carry passengers comfortably from Pan Am's ticketing area to gentle dockings with airliners parked on runways far from the terminal.

As anachronistic as they seem, Plane Mates* represent just one more way in which airlines are attempting to ease the physical strain on air travelers at large airports, where the distances between ticket counters and loading gates (and between parking lots and terminal buildings) have grown to exhausting extremes. Negotiating that distance—especially for late arrivals who must carry their luggage directly to the loading gate, usually on the dead run—is a traumatic experience that is disenchanting increasing numbers of air travelers. At J.F.K., passengers may have to walk as far as 1,130 feet to reach their departure gate (see box).

Moving Sidewalks. Baggage-laden passengers arriving at Cleveland's Hopkins International Airport 15 minutes before flight time, for example, stand a good chance of missing their plane if it is scheduled to depart from a distant gate in the new South Concourse wing. To carry the aged and infirm down that seemingly endless corridor, Hopkins International has put into service a small fleet of motorized carts.

Another kind of cart carries passengers from check-in counters to aircraft loading areas at Tampa's shiny new $80 million terminal. Called "horizontal elevators," these conveyances run on rubber wheels, have no seats but offer plenty of vertical safety poles to cling to, and are designed to operate smoothly for the benefit of the large percentage of elderly riders in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area. Municipal airports in Dallas, San Francisco and Los Angeles have built moving sidewalks —conveyor belts that transport passengers to loading areas; in Los Angeles, for example, they save about 420 ft. of walking. Prosaic buses haul passengers from terminal to aircraft at Atlanta and Honolulu airports, among others. The Hawaiian version consists of pint-sized wiki wiki (hurry hurry) vehicles that play taped Hawaiian music and broadcast advice on where to rent cars and find free pineapple juice.