Originally Posted by
San Gottardo
But in airports where there are distinct terminal buildings (CDG, JFK, LHR…), there is no need. Which means that in the case of CDG, with the exception of the new Terminal 5 which has distinction boarding concourses (some need to be reached by train, others not), there is no such need. You check in Terminal 1, you go to gate number x or y, which are necessarily in that terminal. You check in Terminal 2, you go to gate number x or y. And so on.
Except that CDG doesn't have distinct terminal buillding in the same sense JFK or LHR have. The main difference is that you may check-in in one "terminal" and depart from another - which is exactly the same situation as in VIE, hence the same solution.
Alternatively, if one really is convinced that there have be no two gates with the same number in the entire airport, you could just prefix every gate number with the first number of the terminal. All gates in T1 start with 1xx, in T2 they are gates 2xx, and so on.
But how is your solution any better? How is 1xx better than e.g. Dxx? Because I gave you an argument why ADP's solution is better - you can easily point people towards a group of gates even if you don't know the specific gate the flight is going to depart from. It's much easier to print "D" on the boarding pass instead of "101-137" (the same applies to signage, if you have a path towards E, V and Z gates, it's easier to put those three large letter on a sign then "101-137, 301-348, 701-732"). I miss any valid counterargument why the numeric solution would be better in any way at all. The only argument I read was that gate numbers would match the terminal, but that's actually a bad thing, since you may depart from terminal 1 but your gate may actually be in terminal 7.
(The numbers and letters I used as an example to demonstrate the principle, I'm aware the exact numbers and letters will be different at CDG.)
I agree with you, many people don’t think about certain things, they just follow signs. So they can just as well follow signs to « Gate 1xx » which would logically be in T1 or follow signs to « Gate 6xx » which would logically be in T6. There is no need to use those letters, which just add another layer of structure (fair enough, if you think that is needed), which has nothing to do with their location (that is just adding unnecessary complexity).
See above, this actually creates more confusion. I also suspect it's incompatible with systems used airlines for boarding passes etc. (sure, AF could adjust their IT and their BP format to allow "101-137" to be printed but you can't expect all airlines flying to CDG to do that, not to mention that imho it would be more confusing anyway).
So my question remains: Why is the logical flow of "depart from terminal 1, gates V" worse than "depart from terminal 1, gates 301-348"?