Atlanta air traffic
 

Arguably ATL is the most efficient airport ammongst AOS (airports of size)..

I always question to what extent that was pure luck. Did they realize back in the 70s that the then common spoke system has issues? Or were they just trying to fit it in the space so went the T-A-B-C-D linear setup? Do not know.

45 years later the only thing they really missed was the huge expansion in international flight. Back in the 70s, ATL international was "regional". True long haul was via the international gateways, not ATL. Even so, the international expansion has gone well, other than the groundside I<>D that sucks.

100% true.

And it might not be there in its current form if Birmingham did not "fumble" it away...
https://www.cbs42.com/news/cbs-42-in...lta/1180005047

Great question. Would love to know more about that myself.

It is remarkable what happens at ATL every day, if you step back and think about it. They do a superb job there overall. Considering all the renovations yet I never really was inconvenienced in any way.

ATL is definitely quite efficient, and I think a fair part of it's success while continuing to grow is the end around taxiway on Runway 8R. It saves hundreds of runway crossings a day, and those crossings can take quite long at other airports like JFK.

As ATL is my home airport.. I too can say they do a great job..and of course the best part is that most of AA flights are out of the T gates.. which of course mean no "plane train"

What? I like the plane train. Maybe just to see all the people that don't heed the warnings to hold on and then they almost fall over when it starts to move.

Delta is, by far, the best large hub to change gates IMHO. It doesn't matter if you are the farthest away from where you need to go, with the plane train and just walking it should never take more than 20 minutes to get where you need to depart. Plus, for a large hub, you don't wait in line for takeoff as long as other hubs (Phoenix, Charlotte and Chicago come to mind).

I also think they got really lucky with the timing of ATL. Had it been earlier, it's likely they wouldn't have gone with 4 parallel runways (did it always have 4?) and now a 5th. Back then, many airports had crosswind runways (i.e. ORD), but with the advent of the jet age, planes became a lot more crosswind tolerant. There are still many major airports in the US that are constrained due to crossing crosswind runways. SFO, LGA, BOS, DCA, etc.

The northernmost runway was built in the 1980's.

The main portion of ATL was designed by an Atlanta architectural firm named Stephens & Wilkinson (now S&W Architects). Even 40 years on, it is a marvel of efficiency. The only (minor) change that would have made it better would have been wider concourses to accommodate moving walkways.

Look at all of the airport terminals around the world designed by big "name" architecture firms like Norman Foster & Associates or Richard Rogers Partnership/Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, etc (HKG, PEK, the never-built MEX, LHR T5). They are glamorous and glitzy, and they get a lot of press, especially in the design industry. But they don't work nearly as efficiently as ATL. Stephens & Wilkinson designed a giant factory for moving a LOT of people, and they totally succeeded.

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.

I can stand the announcements they make on the train..."A is XQCWWWC. B is for %#T$TG$" I am sure you understand what I am saying
because under my breath, I am coming up with my own wordage.. which of course annoys my wife when we travel together

It has been since I moved here form Los Angeles back in 1996, it helps that I work for myself,
Hey, my wife who was a PLT on DL for years and years, she joined with me on AA, now she is EXP,
her upgrades are so far this year 100%, while she was with DL. about 5%.(and she works for a major shipping company based out ATL)

Wow what an incredible site! Thanks for sharing it (even though it just cost me a couple of hours of my life, but in a good way :D ). I learned a lot - for example, I never knew ATL had the IAD-like mobile lounges at one point. The city and airport planners were amazingly very forward-thinking a few decades ago.

I echo the sentiment here, ATL is almost incomprehensibly huge, and is certainly not perfect, but it generally does an amazing job of moving such a massive volume of passengers and aircraft through it every day. (No way will I book less than an hour connection there though - I am amazed at some of the short connection times I see on many itineraries when I go to book on Delta's website. I think I have seen like 39 mins., and I think the dom-dom MCT is :35?? Very risky IMO - the place is just too big.)

Prior to implementing the current announcements, they had shorter announcements that said, "Next stop, concourse B." The problem was that in a crowded car full of people talking, the announcements (over a relatively poor quality speaker system) couldn't be understood. "Concourse T" sounded just like "Concourse B" sounded just like "Concourse C" sounded just like "Concourse D" sounded just like "Concourse E".

I def applauded the change in announcements. Are the longer announcements overkill? Maybe, but remember that ATL has to move a LOT of people around, and anything that can be done to make things absolutely clear helps that movement to be efficient. I'll take annoying over inefficient any day. :rolleyes:

complaining about "A as in Alpha" on the plane train announcement is a shoe-in hall of fame entry https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delt...ain-about.html

ATL is a great airport for connecting. Not so much for an end point, but I rarely stop there. Every time I go somewhere else and walk much farther at a much smaller terminal, or have to take a bus to the other terminal (yeah, that's you JFK and LAX) I salute ATL in my head.

Oh, and it's the one place I go where there is a small chance my gate is not at the very end of the terminal ;)

I read once that there are vague, long range plans for yet another concourse, presumably to be named concourse G. Given how spread out the airport is from T to F already, G would end up in near Birmingham anyway so the city might still get their chance for a piece of the pie, LOL. ;)

I thought the long term plans included not only G but also an H and I.

Nit: T is the closest to Birmingham and F is the furthest, so G would be even further. :)