Train surfing is fun, but yeah, E<->F is the tricky part.

And arguably maybe not even that ... ORD removed a bunch of moving sidewalks from the C concourse because they found that they clogged up traffic flow, particularly when there is a big crowd of people waiting to board on one side of the moving sidewalk and totally blocking through traffic on that side. And the flow of people along the concourses at ATL can often be so great that I could easily see moving sidewalks getting overwhelmed and creating congestion of people trying to flow onto them at the ends.

That said, wider concourses without moving sidewalks, to allow more walking space and/or bigger gate seating areas, might have been nice to have.

Makes you wonder why they made D so narrow compared to T-A-B-C? In the early 1980's, the main tenants (DL and EA) split A,B, and C and all others were relegated to D
No connecting traffic flow in D?
Still, why not just build them all the same?

Yeah, triple simultaneous ILS approaches was unheard of not so long ago. Still, I believe the only airports that can keep a high arrival rate (>90 AAR) even in Low IMC conditions are ATL, DFW, ORD (with the new alignment) and DEN, IAD aren't far behind.

TL;DR: ATL is in rare company with it's RWY capacity.

A and the south end of B were built to DL's specs, C and the north end of B were built to EA's specs (Have you ever notice the change in level in B just south of the centerpoint? Or the Eastern tunnel shortcut from B to C and midway up the north half of the concourses.)

D was built for O&D traffic for everybody else. With the exception of the brief period when TW had a mini-hub at ATL, D never really had connecting traffic until DL expanded into the north half.

If D concourse was 5ft wider and it is roughly 1/4 mile long and construction costs were $300/sf (these are all WAGS), then you've increased construction costs by nearly $2m. Whatever the actual figures were in the late 70s when it was built, it would still have been a substantial extra cost.

Yeah, makes sense that ATL government needed to save some money and shrunk D to do it. It still looks funny on the satellite views since D is so much skinnier.

IIRC, I took TW from the old EA gates on the south side of C before ValuJet/AirTran took them over. This seems to confirm that TW was in C: https://apnews.com/ed7ece86eb982cec577f1393e2c1dcd3
I remember seeing 6 TW planes on the ground at the same time once when I took TW to MCO.
Kiwi was on D and they were a pretty useful choice for a little while

I've noticed the tunnel. You can still see the stairway (escalator?) leading to it on Google Maps or when taxiing on that ramp. I wonder if it's still there, or if they just filled the entrances in with concrete. I noticed on one side (C I think) there's an elevator where you would have gone down to presumably get to the tunnel.

I think that you are right about the TW gates - I def stand corrected.

I remember using that shortcut when the northern end of C was all ASA EMB120s and I would need to connect in the northern half of B. That tunnel made for a nice little shortcut. I wonder why they got rid of it?

Still there - used for a baggage belt between the B/C bag rooms. The moving sidewalk (going one way) is still in there too.

Here is an old FT thread on the B to C walkway
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delt...r-b-c-atl.html

The next best thing now is the walk from E to F. Very peaceful with the painted glass.
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...51837294c6.jpg
E to F walkway at ATL

someone with a better memory can probably correct this, but I always remember at one end of one terminal (on Eastern) having to walk out to the plane and takes stairs up to the planes. However, I don't remember taking stairs down to the airfield.

Also in Atlanta, but am surprised to see that AA is your preferred airline. Why is that coming from ATL? Don't you have trouble with frequency, etc.? I'd love to fly multiple airlines, but Delta sort of forces us to fly them, you know?

As a resident of Birmingham I still see constant negligence in decisions like that. The guard here simply does not want this city to grow even today.