MonThruThurs

PIT has the worst train I've experienced. Just hate that POS for some reason. Also that airport still looks like its straight from the 90s.

makfan

I have never been to PIT. Doesn't make me want to rush to book a trip.

MonThruThurs

The city is great. Airport, not so much.

tbau

The SEA trains are not nearly as efficient as they should be. Adding another train or two would really help. Other airport trains seem to work just fine (ATL). I also wonder why the train system in SEA has multilingual (Chinese?) announcements. I don't know how non-English speaking passengers are going to manage to do anything in this country once they get off that train.

beckoa

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Isn't Korean and Japanese on the train?

Snowdevil

Announcements on the train to/from the N Satellite appear to be in English only ever since UA departed; the SEA-NRT flight was probably the driver.

beckoa

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Noticed that changed. S is still trilingual?

Edgerfly

Korean and Japanese were always announced on the S gates train when I use to fly NW. Never flew UA so I can't comment if there were announcements in other languages on the N gate train, but can confirm that the announcements are only in English now on the N gate train.

As far as the train system itself goes, I think comparatively to other airport it is as efficient as it gets. A little bit of an inconvenience, yes. But I have never waited longer than 3 minutes for a train out of the N gates.

makfan

I think the visual signs inside the car show other languages and the audio announcements are just English for the N train. I have taken the S train, but I don't remember what it was like.

dayone

How is it the worst? It's two bi-directional people movers on a straight route that takes less than 30 seconds. At normal times, the wait between departures is less than two minutes.

The airport could do with some updating.

slopeboy40

So was the move to N forced on AS or was it their choice? If it was their own doing then that decision maker should be fired. N gates are a miserable experience. No boardroom, crowded gates, limited food options, crowded bathrooms (all 2 of them), and then you compare it to what we once had with C & D and the (fairly) new Pacific Marketplace area. Who's idea was this???? With SEA being my "home" airport it really is depressing every time I go to the airport.

On the plus side, I'm flying Horizon tomorrow and praying to the Gods that I get to depart out of C. ^

beckoa

I think it was AS. This is the only terminal that can be expanded from what I've heard, and AS has plans for expansion in SEA. They didn't want to be shoehorned into C & D, plus D gets extremely tight (especially at the end) and creates delays. That last gate requires quite the tow. Things should improve... but at a POS pace.

Hadrian35

I miss the ritual of riding the train... and a little bit the UA dungeon which was peaceful as long as the NRT flight wasn't packing it in down there. Other than that, this UA flyer was happy with A gates. AS can have that damn high density cattle lot. Getting a starbux there was always ridiculous.

LarkSFO

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2014/0...s-forward.html

"Alaska and the port are redesigning and expanding the airport’s North Satellite Terminal to become the signature axis of Alaska’s airline network. That terminal along with the airport’s C Concourse will ultimately serve Alaska flights.

The port’s “Northstar Project” would reconfigure and expand the gates at the North Satellite to create a total of 20 gates, up from the current 12.

The port commission at its Tuesday meeting authorized the expansion of the terminal to the northwest adding five gates. That $191 million addition raises the price of the total Northstar Project to an estimated $406 million.

The terminal will continue to operate during the expansion and remodeling project. Construction on the terminal could begin in the fall of 2015 with completion in the summer of 2019.

The project will create additional escalator and elevator access from the airport subway to the terminal, change the layout and aesthetics of the terminal to meet 21st century standards and create a new clubroom for Alaska’s frequent fliers. The port and Alaska are also studying whether to create gates to allow Alaska’s planes to load and unload from both the front and rear doors."

lg20

I believe part of the issue was operational as well. The C/D ramp wasn't really made for as many 737s with high utilization like they run now. So, moving to N allowed for better flight ops with less tarmac delays trying to back planes out from between C and D. Moving to N gave them much more freedom to have planes run on time. That's why the lower D gates tend to only be used for RONs and otherwise sparingly throughout the day.