Ever flown into San Jose Airport? I’ve been amused that the airport in the middle of one of the richest, highest-tech areas of the country mostly makes the passengers walk out to the plane to board via the stairways. (I think they’re adding a new passenger terminal that will use jetways.) On the bright side, they do sometimes use two stairways; at the front and back of the plane to speed boarding. And at least one of the gates has a jetty from which you can watch the passengers disembark.
Hope it’s OK to bump this. I have just come back from a flight into Heathrow, and have confirmation of what they are called officially: under the thingummy we’re discussing, there was a big notice that said “DO NOT PARK UNDER THE JETTY”. So Dewey Finn inadvertently has it for the UK at least. Should have known it would have been nautical.
Using stairs for boarding is one way in which European low-cost airlines have speeded up turnarounds.
The mobile stairs are still used at Toronto (Pearson) airport for boarding smaller planes, the thirty- or fifty-seater turboprops that go on local flights to places like Sault Ste. Marie.
The planes pull up outside a part of the terminal where the waiting room is built at pavement level and doors open directly onto the pavement in fromt of the aircraft. When I went to the Soo, it was raining and I got a bit wet. I can see how it would be a problem in more adverse conditions
Most of the terminal uses passenger boarding bridges.
I was going to say that the mobile stairs are still used at Toronto (Pearson) airport for boarding smaller planes, but I seem to remember that, on the plane I went on to Sault Ste. Marie, the stairs were part of the plane.
The planes pull up outside a part of the terminal where the waiting room is built at pavement level and doors open directly onto the pavement in fromt of the aircraft. When I went to the Soo, it was raining and I got a bit wet. I can see how it would be a problem in more adverse conditions
Most of the terminal uses passenger boarding bridges.
(Well, bother. I somehow doubleposted instead of editing. Please ignore that first post.)
Back when they were still using 727s for the New York-Washington shuttle, they sometimes unloaded (never loaded) by opening the rear stairway along with the front door at the jetway (passenger boarding bridge, for those worried about trademark infringement). Passengers in the back could walk down the rear stairs and across the tarmac to a door in the terminal near the jetway, where they would go up stairs to get to the gate area. There were airline employees guiding the passengers so they didn’t wander off into some other plane’s jet intake or someplace else unpleasant.
The reason that this worked was, of course, that the 727 had the internal rear stairway that could be used without the time and trouble of maneuvering a portable stair to a secondary door. Also, most shuttle passengers were experienced air travellers who regularly flew the route and appreciated faster and more efficient service than on a normal route.
Most modern jetliners don’t have such a rear stairway, and though the wait to get off the back of a plane may be annoying, it really doesn’t take much relative time. The new terminals for the A380s are being built with dual jetways to load/unload both levels of the plane, but otherwise, it generally isn’t worth the trouble.
In Britain the Air Accident Investigation Branch use either “airbridge” or [manoeuverable] “jetty”.
All the BA Boeing 777s out of Heathrow use busses and stairs.
I would consider Cape Town International Airport as part of the developed world (it is more modern and easier to go through than practically any other airport I have been through, although it does benefit from being somewhat smaller) and it uses a combination of jetways and buses / stairs. I think it is phasing out the buses / stairs, especially for international flights.
Long Beach, California uses ‘outside’ stairways. It’s a small but pretty cool airport - still feels a bit 1930-ish.
For some reason I was always brought up to think they were called catwalks. Is this some sort of idiosyncratic family thing, a regional thing, or what?
jjimm writes:
> Hope it’s OK to bump this. I have just come back from a flight into Heathrow,
> and have confirmation of what they are called officially: under the thingummy
> we’re discussing, there was a big notice that said “DO NOT PARK UNDER THE
> JETTY”. So Dewey Finn inadvertently has it for the UK at least. Should have
> known it would have been nautical.
Ah, yes, the jetty. Every time I hear that word I have a flashback to an incident that happened to me as a child. That was before the war, of course. I was on the jetty at the airport. There was a beautiful woman there. And a man was shot. But why does everyone speak French in my memory of that incident?
Is this for some technical reason? They don’t do so at Gatwick.
That’s odd; in my memory, only the music is French, and there’s some nonsense about monkeys.
[QUOTE=Sunspace]
I was going to say that the mobile stairs are still used at Toronto (Pearson) airport for boarding smaller planes, but I seem to remember that, on the plane I went on to Sault Ste. Marie, the stairs were part of the plane.
[QUOTE]
You remember correctly. The stairs are built into the inside surface of the passenger door.
Broome has no fancy “Airbridge” or “Jetway” or “Jetty” or “Wharf” or whatever. We make do with mobile stairs for the larger aircraft and inbuilt stairs for the smaller ones. It’s a small town; it can’t really justify such extravegance.
It’s a good thing. It means the passengers get to experience the full glory of our tropical heat without being pampered by airconditioned walkways.
I flew in and out of Dublin airport (with Ryanair) last month and used the stairs both ways.
Salt Lake City uses stairs in at least one terminal for turboprops and smaller passenger jets.
You were lucky. Normally Ryanair loads the passengers on with a trebuchet and unloads them with a water cannon.
BA get the lions share of traffic through Terminal 4
You can only run x number of planes to x number of gates but you have x+10 flights in any given departure period.
So you get bussed out to the 777 parking lot.
On the plus side you get a good view of the aircraft and whether they are fitted with ETOPS.
Sadly the ones I’ve travelled on weren’t 
Is that supposed to make me feel ‘safer’ when I travel BA :smack:
I’d like to know more about you spotting aircraft “fitted with ETOPS”.
All Boeing 757,767, and 777 are capable of flying ETOPS. You just can’t see it by looking at the aircraft though.
Once the aircraft series has been passed for ETOPS by the relevant authority (eg the CAA) then as long as each individual aircraft of that series conforms to the ETOPS maintenance standard then it can fly ETOPS.
You would only know by looking at the aircraft’s log book and associated records.
I’d like to put my name down for aircraft jetty as the walkway on to an aircraft too. It’s what we always referred to it as in my days at Heathrow.