Count me as a fan of the change -- I don't transit SFO often but I can't say I've ever found the current system particularly good in terms of wayfinding.
Originally Posted by
Danski
This might make sense at LAX as well, where the terminal and gate nomenclature limit each terminal to 10 gate numbers before you have to tack on letters or special characters (for example, Gate 71, 71A, 71.2, 71.2:-:, etc).
Perhaps they should incorporate emojis - Your flight to Hawaii? Gate
. Your flight to [place you really dislike]? Gate
.
ORD got rationalized a few years ago... there's the chance that it could come to LAX but I'm not holding my breath (two easy ways would be to make the gates 3 digits -- gate 801 instead of 81 -- or replace the first digit with an alpha -- H1). On the current trajectory LAX starts using gate numbers like 72A4C I'll know there's no hope.
Being both an aviation and technology geek the TV in my (travel themed) guest bedroom has an "interpretation" of the FIDS used in the UA podium backwall using real airports and delay reasons but a random number generator for times, flight numbers, and gates. Occasionally I'll have the wife play "Is that a real gate number?" -- I think the most absurd it's come up with was V103W. Thankfully I haven't seen that one IRL yet.
Might have to add the emojis next time I updated it