I was thinking about this as I was walking through the C gates yesterday. There are a few things that conspire to make this area a mess during certain times of the day:
- Gate C3's waiting area is extremely undersized. They fly mainline 737s out of here and there can't be more than 50 or 60 seats in the holding area - this should really be a gate for Horizon E175s. When a flight out of there boards, the gate lice spill out into the concourse and block the flow of people. Compounding the problem, immediately next to that is a
big pillar which forces thru traffic to bunch up.
- The bathrooms in the area pictured above are horribly undersized for the number of gates they serve. They're almost always crowded, dirty, and often have people congregating outside waiting to get in, or waiting for others to finish. Those freakin pillars again steal space and compound the problem around the flow of passengers in and out of this area.
- Horizon's gate setup at C2 and C10, where there's that walkway behind the gate podiums, steals yet more square footage from the thru traffic on the concourse, not to mention the seating area for these flights.
- Speaking of Horizon, these flights disproportionately serve connecting traffic and so there's this constant hustle/bustle there where passengers are running to make their connection. It's always frazzled and rarely relaxed in the C gates.
If I had a magic wand and unlimited money to fix all of this, I would build a second story on top of the existing C2/C10 area and consolidate Horizon operations there. That would give the C3 gate a real waiting area and allow the port to expand the thru traffic paths to and from the central terminal and the "deeper" C gates, and build retail and adequately sized restrooms in the existing areas. Maybe you could even connect it to the Alaska Lounge which is up on the second floor at the end of the C gates. I feel like something in this area has to be the next project the Port undertakes - the existing design is buckling under the current passenger load.