Hey people!

How do you figure out where which airline parks at which gate at which airport? For example where do the Thompson mainly park at London Gatwick? Hope this makes sense to you! I've tried researching online but no avail, the only thing I've managed to find is certain YouTube uploaders actually posts which gate there depart from! But that's the rare few that I have found!

Cheers!

Sam Book

If you mean for flight sim then I guess checking out pictures, videos, trip reports, FR24, Live ATC would be your best bet to find out.

 

If you mean in real life you'll get told typically by your handling agent when you first contact them before you land.

 

Regards,

Ró.

Flightaware sometimes shows it. Some US airlines also have it marked on their terminal maps (the ones for passengers). Usually there is some system you can figure out, e.g at Schiphol, A & B are for turbo-props and small regionals, C & low D is for inter-Schengen flights. High D is for single-aisle outside of Schengen, E & F are wide-body and there is also a low-cost terminal (H I think, but not sure on that one).

Flightstats will also show gates for some airports.

 

If not, best to try either the airlines website (Flight Status) or the Airports Live Flight Information (Arrivals/Departures). Sometimes it is just not possible to find the real gate for the flight your simulating and you'll just have to park wherever is free.

The birds eye view in Bing Maps shows Thompson at gate 25 of Pier 2 and at gate 32 of Pier 3 in the south terminal although Wikipedia shows Thompson operating out of the north terminal. You could spot several other airlines in this way. It's better than the satellite view of Google Maps because it's an angled view and can be rotated.

Some airlines have ramp maps as a part of their jepp collections. 

The webpage www.airportterminalmaps.com used to show where each airline was parked on a great number of airports but they have changed it so that you now only see where the different gates are. This is still useful for US airports since you rarely find charts with the parking positions for them, but for most european charts you'd find that information from freely available official charts.

 

The company behind airportterminalmaps.com now has an app for iPad at least that I ended up buying, where you can actually see where the airlines park. For Thomson at Gatwick it shows "North terminal"  and with the following gates: