It's official Korean Air brings Airbus 380 Service to Atlanta
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Officially one more month before the big baby Airbus 380 arrives in Atlanta Sept 1. Korean Airlines now is exclusive highlighting the new super jumbo aircraft to Atlanta service on its airline web site.
Officially one more month before the big baby Airbus 380 arrives in Atlanta Sept 1. Korean Airlines now is exclusive highlighting the new super jumbo aircraft to Atlanta service on its airline web site.
That's awesome news. Was just at JFK and couldn't believe the size of the planes up there. Glad to see this coming to Atlanta.
Flew out to Korea at the beginning of the month and returned last weekend with an A380 both ways. I wouldn't say it's a beautiful looking aircraft, but the layout inside was great - good seats with plenty of room, even in economy. Was also pleasantly surprised how quiet the cabin was, even compared to the 777. And the service was ..well, a genuine service. In a quite different league than what one gets accustomed to, flying out of ATL!
But....
Why, when a new International terminal has recently opened, are the only gates that can deal with the A380 are in the E concourse (E3, E1) ? The last thing you need after a long, long flight amd a 13 hour time change is a brisk 20 minute hike over to the immigration lines in an otherwise fine International terminal.
The A380 has been in service for the last 8 years, so can hardly have been a surprise to the terminal designers....
Flew out to Korea at the beginning of the month and returned last weekend with an A380 both ways. I wouldn't say it's a beautiful looking aircraft, but the layout inside was great - good seats with plenty of room, even in economy. Was also pleasantly surprised how quiet the cabin was, even compared to the 777. And the service was ..well, a genuine service. In a quite different league than what one gets accustomed to, flying out of ATL!
But....
Why, when a new International terminal has recently opened, are the only gates that can deal with the A380 are in the E concourse (E3, E1) ? The last thing you need after a long, long flight amd a 13 hour time change is a brisk 20 minute hike over to the immigration lines in an otherwise fine International terminal.
The A380 has been in service for the last 8 years, so can hardly have been a surprise to the terminal designers....
How was the load factor, was it a pack flight? I'm wondering how Korean Air is holding up, since they ended many code sharing flights with Delta. Yeah the A380 has been in service for 8 years, but Korean Air, Lufthansa, and Air France only express interest in using them to Atlanta only a couple years ago. Also Delta had a major part in the design of concourse F, and not designing for the A380 was probably done deliberately to keep competition out.
Flew out to Korea at the beginning of the month and returned last weekend with an A380 both ways. I wouldn't say it's a beautiful looking aircraft, but the layout inside was great - good seats with plenty of room, even in economy. Was also pleasantly surprised how quiet the cabin was, even compared to the 777. And the service was ..well, a genuine service. In a quite different league than what one gets accustomed to, flying out of ATL!
But....
Why, when a new International terminal has recently opened, are the only gates that can deal with the A380 are in the E concourse (E3, E1) ? The last thing you need after a long, long flight amd a 13 hour time change is a brisk 20 minute hike over to the immigration lines in an otherwise fine International terminal.
The A380 has been in service for the last 8 years, so can hardly have been a surprise to the terminal designers....
With such a simple question there are actually many points that need to be touched on....
First, the E concourse is still an international concourse with its own customs operations.
The new international terminal was an addition (not replacement) of international arrival gates. It also added the terminal where people can enter/exit the airport. It is only 12 of the 40 international gates ATL has.
To accommodate the A380 they had to extend the runway and widen some taxiways. If you look at an overhead view of the airport you'll see an excess of space in that area behind the E-Gates. It is the perfect area to park and maneuver slow moving oversized planes. There is less activity from nearby gates and extra space.
Concourse E is still the largest Customs facility the airport has for international arrivals.
In many ways it makes sense.
With that said... there are 2 glaring criticisms/weaknesses the new international terminal has. You just experienced the maximum extent of one of them.
1) In certain circumstances a select group of passengers have to walk further (without assistance, ie. moving walkway, train, etc..) than industry standards typically allow.
2) is the the connectivity problems with ground transportation.
Everyone goes through customs in the concourse they land at... except one specific group, those of us arriving into Atlanta as our final destination that landed in concourse E. We have to hike to concourse F. The problem is we haven't cleared customs, so they don't want us to access the train. They want us to clear customs in F, rather than E, so we can walk our checked luggage through customs (required) and not have to go through security to access the airport -or- hike with our luggage from concourse E to F (if we went through customs in E).
This means those arriving at the furthest ends of concourse E, including the A380 gates, and not connecting have the longest walk in the airport.
The criticism is they didn't adaquetly engineer around this problem, such as adding additional moving walkways.
As for the original question ... in short Concourse E is still 28 of Atlanta's 40 international gates. The A-380 doesn't have to go to F and there were some conveniences for ground operations for it to go to E. I think at this point ATL only has 2 gates total that can handle the A380.
One of the biggest reasons they built the new huge runway at ATL was to accomodate those huge planes. That is 560 people with money landing here and cannot be anything but good for us.
With such a simple question there are actually many points that need to be touched on....
First, the E concourse is still an international concourse with its own customs operations.
The new international terminal was an addition (not replacement) of international arrival gates. It also added the terminal where people can enter/exit the airport. It is only 12 of the 40 international gates ATL has.
To accommodate the A380 they had to extend the runway and widen some taxiways. If you look at an overhead view of the airport you'll see an excess of space in that area behind the E-Gates. It is the perfect area to park and maneuver slow moving oversized planes. There is less activity from nearby gates and extra space.
Concourse E is still the largest Customs facility the airport has for international arrivals.
In many ways it makes sense.
With that said... there are 2 glaring criticisms/weaknesses the new international terminal has. You just experienced the maximum extent of one of them.
1) In certain circumstances a select group of passengers have to walk further (without assistance, ie. moving walkway, train, etc..) than industry standards typically allow.
2) is the the connectivity problems with ground transportation.
Everyone goes through customs in the concourse they land at... except one specific group, those of us arriving into Atlanta as our final destination that landed in concourse E. We have to hike to concourse F. The problem is we haven't cleared customs, so they don't want us to access the train. They want us to clear customs in F, rather than E, so we can walk our checked luggage through customs (required) and not have to go through security to access the airport -or- hike with our luggage from concourse E to F (if we went through customs in E).
This means those arriving at the furthest ends of concourse E, including the A380 gates, and not connecting have the longest walk in the airport.
The criticism is they didn't adaquetly engineer around this problem, such as adding additional moving walkways.
As for the original question ... in short Concourse E is still 28 of Atlanta's 40 international gates. The A-380 doesn't have to go to F and there were some conveniences for ground operations for it to go to E. I think at this point ATL only has 2 gates total that can handle the A380.
The problem with not being allowed on the train to ride from E to F to clear Customs and Immigration could be easily solved by using technology. They could attach locked RFID chips to the passenger on the wrist- much like a handcuff- that would allow the passenger to enter the train. The train would be equipped with an RFID reader and would only proceed beyond Concourse F after all people with the locked RFID chip had exited the train (a TSA security offcicial would be there to make sure they got off the train). Then, once in F, the TSA could simply unlock and remove the RFID and direct the passengers into Customs and Immigration for processing.
The problem with not being allowed on the train to ride from E to F to clear Customs and Immigration could be easily solved by using technology. They could attach locked RFID chips to the passenger on the wrist- much like a handcuff- that would allow the passenger to enter the train. The train would be equipped with an RFID reader and would only proceed beyond Concourse F after all people with the locked RFID chip had exited the train (a TSA security offcicial would be there to make sure they got off the train). Then, once in F, the TSA could simply unlock and remove the RFID and direct the passengers into Customs and Immigration for processing.
I don't think that would work well. Given the high number of passengers you'd have to enough enforcement/ambassadors standing by for people who get lost or try to break security. The other problem is nothing can delay those trains, like someone accidentally or purposely not getting off at F like they should. It would cause huge back ups moving people through the rest of the airport if those trains aren't there ever 2 minutes.
Other international airports wouldn't try that either.
The other side to that is it would allow people to intermix with people who don't need to go through customs. The area needs to remain sterile. In other words they can't intermix or exchange items for Customs reasons.
The same problem exists for security screening. It is assumed passengers need to be re-screened by our standards on some of the places passengers come in from.
Really they just needed to have built a wider hallway where they could install a one-way moving sidewalk... even better if it is one of those fast moving sidewalks, like what Toronto's airport has! That thing is amazing and is perfect for long distances where people don't need to periodically get off.
The other thing they could have tried engineering is one car on the train that opens its doors to a sterile area in E and F in front of or behind the non-sterile station and only goes one way. I'm sure it would have taken alot of effort to engineer it appropriately, but it could use the same tracks and serve the same purpose.
One of the biggest reasons they built the new huge runway at ATL was to accomodate those huge planes. That is 560 people with money landing here and cannot be anything but good for us.
The new 5th runway, 10/28, is the exact same size as the next two smallest runways that are often used to handle landings.
It was not built to handle larger planes. It was merely built to help land more planes, quicker at peak times.
The existing runway 9L/27R was lengthened and widened specifically to handle take offs for the A380, as well as allowing for heavier cargo and other trans-ocean planes. They also had to widen the taxiway between concourse E and the runway specifically for the A380.
They also had to widen 9R/27L and a taxiway to concourse E, so it could also handle landings of the A380.
In many respects that plane can only fit though a few places at the airport. Kind of interesting to look into really.
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