Midfield concourses - Rapid, efficient transfer of connecting passengers

Efficient for high levels of transfer traffic

Midfield concourse: The British Airports Authority originally
built London/Stansted with only midfield concourses widely
separated from the main building and check-in facilities.
Whereas these are convenient for transfer passengers who
remain confined to these buildings, they are inconvenient for
passengers connecting with ground transport and expensive
for the airport operator. They are thus now underused and
represent a large waste of resources. Ryanair, now the
dominant airline at the airport, insisted on the construction of
a finger pier design for its traffic even though capacity was
already available at the midfield concourses.

Airlines are sensitive to the costs of maneuvering their aircraft on

the ground. They recognize and can be willing to pay for airport configurations
that save them time. Significant reductions in the time
spent taxiing aircraft can justify hundreds of millions of dollars in
new construction. This factor is worth emphasizing, as discussions of
the choice of airport configurations typically ignore this important
consideration.
Simple calculations illustrate the great value to the airlines of
easy ground movements. Recognize first that the direct operating
cost of a large commercial jet is of the order of about $100 per minute.
At an airport serving 100,000 operations of such aircraft per year (perhaps
one with 25 million passengers), a configuration that saves just
3 minutes per operation would give the airlines around $30 million a
year in direct benefits alone-the equivalent of about $300 million in
capital investment.1 At larger airports, the savings would be greater.
A comparable improvement at London/Heathrow, with over 450,000
operations a year, might be worth the equivalent of about $1 billion in
capital cost. Such savings provide a strong rationale for tearing down
inefficient configurations and starting all over again, the case of
London/Heathrow for its Central Terminal Area.

In this vein, United Airlines benefited greatly from the design of

Denver /International Airport; its midfield concourse and completely
paved apron dramatically improved the efficiency of its aircraft operations
compared to the Denver/Stapleton airport it replaced. The new
layout, similar to that of Atlanta shown in Fig. 9.7, features dual taxiways
between the midfield passenger buildings tl1at permit straightin
and straight-out maneuvers and reliably reduced the average taxi
time per operation. After moving to Denver /International, United
was able to-tighten its schedules by about15 minutes on around trip
through Denver. According to their facility manager at the time, this
midfield configuration not only reduced direct costs but indirectly
boosted aircraft productivity by enabling United to get an extra round
trip a day from short-haul flights. Small savings in time may appear
insignificant, but, when cumulated over a day, they can have a major
impact. As in many aspects of airport systems, small improvements
applied to frequent operations can add up to great savings.
Airlines that operate transfer hubs benefit from configurations that
facilitate these operations. Regarding transfers, the airline perspective
aligns with that of the passengers. Both want fast, reliable, and easy-tofind
transfers. Configurations that facilitate these objectives are worth
considerable money to tl1e airlines, and they are willing to pay for it.
This is why airlines have backed the construction of midfield concourses
at Atlanta (Delta), Chicago/O'Hare and Denver/International
(United Airlines), and Detroit/Metro (Northwest and now Delta).

Designers of airport passenger buildings face a fundamental problem:

They need the buildings to be both concentrated and spread out. They
need to bring passengers into common areas to facilitate check-in procedures,
retail opportunities, and access to public transport. They
must also spread out the passengers so that they can board their aircraft.
The large wingspan of aircraft imposes long separations between
adjacent gates. The lateral distance between gates must be in the range
of 50 to 85 m, allowing for clearance between aircraft (Table 14.3). All
configurations of passenger buildings represent approaches to resolve
this fundamental dilemma.
The possibilities for resolving this conflict changed greatly with
the ··development·ofTost0effective"people movers11 (see Chap; 17); ·
These devices are small trains or horizontal elevators. They speed
people away from a central point, such as a check-in hall, to buildings
spread out over the airport. They make it practical to locate passenger
buildings over several kilometers and have led to the widespread
implementation of midfield concourses at major airports. This technical
innovation fundamentally changed the possibilities for effective
design of airport passenger buildings.
Midfield Concourses
Midfield concourses are major independent passenger buildings, often
located far from the central passenger building that passengers access
from the groundside. They may have around 50 gates and be about
1 km long. The linear Concourse B occupied by United Airlines at
Denver/International is 990 m (3300 ft) long and has 46 aerobridge
gates with a ground-level extension serving additional positions for
small aircraft. The X-shaped midfield concourse at Kuala Lumpur offers
27 gates. Midfield concourses are typically between parallel runways
and separated from the other passenger buildings by major taxiways.
They can also be located on the edge of the runways as part of a complex
of passenger buildings, as is the United Airlines midfield concourse at
Chicago/O'Hare. Midfield concourses differ from satellites in their size
and distance from the groundside, but this distinction is not firm.
Because of the distances and number of people involved, passengers
usually access midfield concourses by self-propelled people movers.
Reliable, economical people movers have transformed the possibilities
for the design of airport passenger buildings and other landside facilities
such as parking lots and car rental facilities.2 They are indispensable for
the development and operation of midfield concourses.
2People movers are either self-propelled or pulled by cable as an elevator. Selfpropelled
vehicles are preferable over longer distances with complex, multiple
routes. Tokyo/Narita uses cable-driven people movers to serve its satellite
passenger building.
Midfield concourses come in two basic shapes: linear and X-shaped.
Linear concourses are long buildings with aircraft gates on both sides
(Fig. 14.4). They are frequently wider in the middle, to accommodate
the people mover station, provide a central shopping area, and serve
larger aircraft and their numerous passengers. They are typically
flanked by dual parallel taxiways that allow aircraft to move between
their gates and the runways with a minimum of turns and delays.
Atlanta and Denver /International built their entire airport around linear
midfield concourses. Chicago I O'Hare built a single midfield linear
concourse for the transfer operations of United Airlines.
X-shaped midfield concourses feature four fingers intersecting at
right angles. They are rare. The prime examples are at Kuala Lumpur I
International and Pittsburgh. X-shaped configurations implemented
so far have only used one midfield concourse, in contrast to Atlanta,
Denver/International, and London/Stansted, which use several
parallel concourses.
In the Pittsburgh version, the crosspieces are oriented at 45 and
135° from the parallel runways. This arrangement maximizes the
number of gates that can fit between parallel runways. It was appropriate
because Pittsburgh sits on difficult terrain that limits the space
between parallel runways. In the Kuala Lumpur /International
version, the crosspieces are perpendicular or parallel to the runways.
The motivation for cross-shaped midfield concourses was the
idea that the maximum walking distance in this configuration is less
than for a linear concourse, if both have the same number of gates.