April 25, 200521 yr I am not sure whose responsibility it is, but it would be nice if the airlines would fix things with airports such that when maximum capacity is reached, they cease to schedule additional flights or the airport authority just says "No more new flights for the next X years till we have the gates and jetways in place.". I think it's a combination of excessive ambition of the airlines combined with excessively ambitious airport authorities that results in the situation I describe.Have you seen Heathrow in recent years? Jumbo jets all over the aprons around Terminal 3 with no jetways because there are none left. I never imagined it would be thus--and Heathrow was my home base growing up, a field to be proud of. It's a bloody disgrace today.KIAD is also a great field--well, OK, it was a great field till about 2000--and that is a total disaster zone today as well. And those cruddy people-movers, man, do they get me and many others very irritated!I was hugely impressed by Munich visually--incredible clean design and beautiful architecture--but not by the service I experienced once on the ground there. Rome Fiumicino was abysmal with a long drive in a huge and crowded bus around the airport aprons to the plane. This is the kind of stuff we did 30 to 40 years ago. But in those days, we were in small buses with a total of 80 pax and there were no jumob jets. Today, the busses take hundreds of pax and it can take an hour or more just to complete the pax loading process. It's just incredible to me that this passes muster as civilized aviation service in today's world.What's it gonna be like with the A380? Will we all be forced in and out through one door -- and onto a waiting bus ?!I do think it pathetic that many coming after me are going to accept this disgusting situation as natural and normal and nothing to be concerned about. Things are moving backwards in this industry and it's never been so bad in terms of customer service (should be "Customer Disservice"!). And let me stress, these comments come from somebody always ready to spend an extra buck (or several hundred) for greater comforts and better service, but alas, it seems, to no avail. OK, where am I ? Well, I probably am burned-out and will likely end up moving into a field where I am not obliged to live like this. I just wanted to post my frustrations to get 'em off my chest.JS Jonathan Sacks Dell XPS Gen 4, Pentium IV Northwood extreme 3.8Ghz, 3Ghz RAM, eVGA 7900 GTO, 12 GoFlight modules plus MCP-PRO AP and EFIS, GF pedestal, CH rudder pedals, CH throttle quadrant, 42" LG LED, 24" DELL LCD, Windows XP, FS2004, FSUIPC 3.96 FS Autostart 1.1 (Build 11), FS Navigator 4.6, UT, FE, GE, REX, PMDG, Level-D, PSS, etc.
April 26, 200521 yr There isn't any profit in upgrading the infastructure, I guess the same thing happens in European countries now too, they all want to follow Americas lead.
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