Isn't there one of those by the river in Westminster?

The collective noun for piers is the 'Wigan'. This comes from the era of popularisation of piers under Victoria, where you would be refused entry (to keep out the riff-raff) if you didn't have a wig on.

so if you have a plane full of people with earn pain that just taxi'd up to one of them after a steep decent, did they experience PIER Pressure?

Can you steer to the pier and drink beers in the clear with your peers or would that be weird? ;)

Are there like huge woden columns with sea weed all over them and a bunch of dirty plastic trash floating around in the sloshing waves below the pier? Is it lilke Atlantic City, NJ where there are references to some long gone time with some diving horse that was famous but in fact the place is really seedy and the sea gulls sound like they whine too much when flying around the PIER?

I dunno, to me, JETway kinda goes more with what the airport actually services these days, but then again, from a municipal standpoint, there are probably reasons for calling it certain things based on historical and other hard-to-change-on-paper reasons. :D

I just know Jim Carey in the movie Dumb and Dumber "fell off the jetway again..."

:)MM

slightly OT: In Germany, we call them "fingers" ...

And what does that translate as?

;)

(I'm sorry I couldn't resist :o)

Depending on the quality of the airline attached to the other end, I've been known to refer to them, in my own mind, as the 'Gang Plank' :)

ROFL. :D^

aerobridge ?

Yes. This is why ground control at FRA will ask pilots who land there for the first time: "Can you find your own way to the terminal or do you want me to show you the finger?"

I've also heard this in Italy as in "Non c'è finger" when referring to a ground-ops gate with no airbridge.