If you're boarding a big aircraft, the kind of large Boeing or Airbus that
goes across the Atlantic, you'll probably get on and off the plane using a jetbridge.
That's the movable, extendable corridor that connects the terminal to the plane.
But sometimes, the plane will have to park at what's called a "remote stand",
just a spot that's assigned in the middle of the tarmac.
And so, as the rain piles down, some cold and tired airport staff
will roll a set of stairs up, and you end up
riding a slow and crowded airport bus instead.
I guess you do get to skip the long walk through the terminal, and it's great if
you're the sort of aviation geek who likes looking behind the scenes at an airport...
but it's not ideal if you have a connection to make.
It could have been very different.
The last time I flew into Montreal, here in Canada, the aircraft door opened and
on the other side was what looked like a strange bus on stilts.
There were three of them.
Passenger transport vehicles, PTVs, one connected to each door of the plane.
And I figured I had a new video idea.
- We have eight PTVs that are in use right now at Montreal Trudeau Airport.
Of course, we always strive to do gating directly,
but during summer season or some peak season during winter time,
we have no choice but to use remote parking.
During our peak season on a regular day,
we receive a bit more than 500 flights here at Montreal Trudeau.
And of those 500 flights, about 10 to 15 of them will be remotely gated with a PTV.
- The idea came from legendary architect Eero Saarinen,
as part of his plan for Washington Dulles Airport,
which still also uses them.
The original name was "mobile lounge".
They were promoted in a short film produced by his friends,
equally legendary designers Charles and Ray Eames.
And that film shows exactly the sort of late-50s luxury techno-optimism that
wouldn't survive the next few decades.
Saarinen's original plan was that airport terminals would work much like they do now,
but smaller, with boarding doors close together.
When it was time to board, a mobile lounge would dock to the terminal,
everyone would get on board,
and they'd be taken out to the remote stand in comfort.
Less space needed, less walking, less noise near the terminal, easier for everyone.
And it worked.
There are photos of mobile lounges lined up outside
brand new shiny terminals that were designed for them.
- When passengers see them arriving, they know that they're not going to have to go outside
in the rain and the snow with their luggage.
For people with reduced mobility, it's more efficient.
For parents, and all the stuff that goes with traveling with children, it's easier.
A PTV can welcome between 100 and 120 passengers per trip,
while a regular bus is more in the mid 70s, 75 passengers.
- Montreal's PTVs here are a more modern variant called the Plane-Mate.
The original lounges were smaller than this, and instead of lifting up on stilts,
they extended a boarding ramp that went out at an incline,
because the planes they were connecting to were smaller too.
Back then, a fully loaded jet might have 100 passengers.
The largest modern planes have four or five times that.
Airport terminals were getting bigger not just to accommodate planes,
but also sheer numbers of people.
Now, these newer versions are bigger, and to dock with the plane,
they lift themselves up with a "screw drive".
Those big lumps on the top?
They're to cover up the poles that the entire cabin is lifting itself along.
- We do the maintenance and operations of the PTVs.
We acquired the manufacturing rights in the year 2000,
so we have all the engineering drawings and everything.
I would say now, we got it down to probably less than 20% that is custom.
The rest is off the shelf parts that we can get.
We have built new ones, and right now we are looking at retrofitting them to electrical.
Our mechanics every day do a walk-around.
We guarantee 99.8% efficiency to the airport.
- So why didn't these end up being used around the world?
Eero Saarinen blamed the cost, and that was certainly a factor.
Planes getting bigger was another.
And the former head of the Washington Airports Authority said that passengers
don't like them because we want autonomy.
We want to get off the damn plane and walk for a bit under our own power.
But if you ask me, I think the main reason is that in 1958,
the same year that animated film was made,
the first modern jet bridge was also installed.
There was one victory for that luxury techno-optimism, though.
The end of that film shows mobile lounges at a surely-soon-to-arrive spaceport.
And while, sadly, no one's boarding a Pan Am flight to the Moon any time soon,
NASA did buy a couple of Plane-Mates for astronaut transport.
There's nothing wrong with mobile lounges.
They still work well here in Montreal.
But when airports were expanding and had to choose,
most of them decided that jetbridges were just a little bit easier and cheaper.
I'm not allowed to drive this, by the way.
Like, thank you to everyone from Montreal Airport for letting me sit here, and for
all the access they've given me, but...
I'm not allowed to drive this.