PSA: avoid SLC like the plague
 

First post-rona trip through SLC this weekend. DL LAS-SLC yesterday was okay, except the jetway was inoperable when we pulled up.... 4th flight in a row with jetway issues, but i digress....

TODAY, AA SLC-DFW, I discovered comedy value unmeasurable with current technology..... i think the distance from Hertz to B15 must be close to a kilometer, and i'm not kidding.

yes, the first remote pier airport in history built without a people mover... it does exist, in Great Salt Lake City Utah.

NEVER fly any airline other than Delta in to SLC. Every other airline is now operating out of Terminal B, aka Siberia, Utah. With zero real estate pressure and miles of open land to the north, the idiots that thought this was an acceptable design should be drawn, quartered, shot, and if there is any electrical activity at all remaining in their spinal cords, dunked in caustic soda, just to be sure. "People are just going to have to arrive earlier" is the statement I heard repeated by <redacted> staff parroting what must be the party line. I witnessed a dozen elderly folks about to COLLAPSE AND DIE halfway down the tunnel under the tarmac, 30 minutes in to their hike aka attempt to Summit Terminal B. There were 30 people in wheelchairs waiting to be pushed down the tunnel. Just fricking insane. Unbelievable.

Note to the stAAf at GSW: i am a paid F customer and I will never willingly fly any airline other than DL to SLC for the remainder of my life, as the word is an APM like Atlanta (1981), Denver (1995) and every other remote pier airport BUILT IN THE HISTORY OF PLANET EARTH is, in Great Salt Lake City, at least "10-15 years away".

Ludicrous. Unbelievable. Add 1 hour to your AA, UL or WN ingress/egress at SLC.

I'm still in disbelief.

Why is there a need to add an hour, you said it was a 1 Km to Hertz from B15. That's about 12 minutes.

According to this map:

https://slcairport.com/assets/pdfDoc...-Distances.pdf

The tunnel is 1200 feet long (0.37km), and the longest walk from the terminal entrance to the farthest gate is 3350 feet (1.02km), so your estimate of 1km from Hertz sounds reasonable. According to the map the 3350 foot walk should take about 15 minutes without using any of the moving walkways. I'd routinely cover that distance in about 10 minutes, but I'm a fast walker.

I was just through there a couple of weeks ago for the first time in several years and I was amazed that they would remodel the airport and not put any kind of people movers in the new construction.

It's definitely a haul form the AA gates to the car rental facility...

They had a choice, build a public fitness facility or just not install people movers. Bean counters opted for the latter.

If you think it’s bad now you should have seen it a year ago. I was shocked when I took a rare Coronavirus era authorized work flight last December on Delta. The new concourse was barely open. No where to eat. And no oxygen bars after hiking between the circus tent where the regional jet shuttle bus dumps you off and the new terminal. Delta was scheduling 35 minute connections. That’s as close as I’ve come to passing out when reaching the plane.

The journey was almost worse in April when more people were flying but only 2 restaurants open. Lines were crazy long waiting to get in.

The DL experience at SLC is even worse than before especially if flying on a Connection flight. Instead of the former “bus terminal” building that was used for these flights which was at least connected to the rest of the concourses, they are now using remote stands and busses. Might as well just plan on being rebooked if your inbound flight is delayed and you are connecting to/from a Connection flight at one of the remote stands.

SLC based here. Keep in mind DL uses gates in B as well, albeit connection flights generally. My last trip was on AA, before that one, on WN and DL. A is closer, yes, but the others from B was fine for me. To each their own…

The thought was that the current airport misery is worth the something like $100 million the airport authority is saving by not doing a more phased demolition of the old terminal complex and rebuilding. So the users of the facility are just expected to deal with current chaos as air travel has rebounded a lot quicker than they expected when decisions were made in the summer of 2020 under the assumption that airport passenger count would be really off for 2-3 more years.

And that's fair. But the decision to build a remote pier airport in the 21st century without an APM train operational on Day 1 is easily the worst decision in the 107 year history of commercial aviation.

The 2nd-worst decision was deciding not to build an APM train AT ALL in Phase 2 or any time in the near future at a brand new remote pier airport built in the 21st century. The below graphic shows the footprint for the trains, they just decided not to build them. At all. For "several decades at the earliest".

https://slcairport.com/assets/The-Ne...MwMCw0MDBd.jpg

So similar in walking distances to the distances one would walk on connections between the farthest apart AA gates at places like CLT, PHL, ORD. Also without people mover / trains.

I walked at a decent pace and timed it. I went from gate B15 to the Lyft pickup zone in 15 minutes. It was a decent hike but nothing horrible. They did have an open cart shuttle in the tunnel. It would have added time but cut down on the walking for those that have trouble walking long distances. I didn't find the experience particularly off-putting.

SLC-based here. The OP is a bit dramatic, but yes it is currently a long hike due to the fact that the CURRENT tunnel is a TEMPORARY one until the main tunnel is complete in a few years. The main tunnel will be more centrally located in the overall design of the airport, which will significantly cut down on the time needed to walk to the other concourse. An APM really won't be necessary when the main tunnel is complete, but will be if an additional concourse gets added well into the future. I will say that the airport's administration did woefully underestimate the traffic rebound, which is totally on them, but it did save over $100 million going this route.

[Removed unnecessarily snarky comment]

SLC - 1230 feet
DEN A-B - 1800 feet <---APM
DTW - 1050 feet
ORD T1 - 840 feet
LAX TBIT Midfield - 1300 feet

The distance from Hertz in the southeast corner of the garage to B15 is a minimum of 4500'. With any queuing back and forth and lice navigation at speed it will get close to 5000'.

I was in TSA for less than 5 minutes with paid F, I stopped for a last bio and handwash, and bought a water. Hertz to B15 walking as fast as possible on the moving walkways with the longest kettle-dodging obstacle course in history was 27 minutes.

It's not the distance, it's the time. SLC has made the decision to achieve their cost savings at the expense of any visitors that choose to use a carrier other than DL, to the tune of a million hours a year.

https://i.ibb.co/wyYcnNn/slc-base1.png

[Removed snarky comment] There is a reason to the current madness. As said above, the current tunnel is a temporary tunnel until the main tunnel is finished. When the main tunnel is finished there will be no need for APM as there will be a train. I can understand that logic.

Now if you want to discuss a bad design decision, try being in Denver when the train derails. There is absolutely no way to get between the concourses.

[Removed quote of and response to now-deleted comment]