As I was sitting in a plane for twenty minutes, taxiing from one end of this monstrosity to the other, I thought of this community! Inside the airport is even worse. It’s just this GIANT, sprawling mall+airport thing, with flat parking deserts in between terminals that are so far apart you have to take a monorail to them. Absolutely wild.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Fort_Worth_International_Airport
While I agree with all of that, if you’re local, you can get dropped off basically at your gate.
This was modeled after the Airport of Tomorrow in Kansas City, which was heavily influenced by TWA who demanded “drive to your gate”, which was in itself heavily influenced by what TWA did at JFK with Eero Saarinen.
That was basically doomed from the start as planes got bigger. And the nail in the coffin was security added later on and basically trapping you in a tiny, crummy gate area at MCI (can you imagine no security at all??) and finally destroyed by the post 2001 security enhancements that made it even worse.
They’ve recently opened a new MCI terminal that replaces the airport of tomorrow and looks like an airport of today.
That is some impressive airport knowledge
No question, I’m a plane nerd.
Thanks for imparting your knowledge.
That’s really interesting! Thanks for the context.