Originally Posted by bzcat

The other reason for going to pier or concourse letters is that you can de-emphasize the terminal number in the future, especially on the South complex where there is probably 50/50 chance that AA will end up with all of T5 and operate T4 and T5 as combined facility. You wouldn't want to renumber all the "500" gates to "400" again when that happens. Going with pier or concourse letters solves that problem - you can make T5 "disappear" without changing gate numbers... Gate H1 will always be the first gate on Pier or Concourse H no matter if it is part of T4 or T5.