During the early sixties, the airports of the western world went through some significant changes. As we entered the Jet Age, the aircraft grew bigger and more space was needed at airports where the aircraft would line up side by side outside the terminal buildings. This necessitated long extensions – often referred to as concourses – which would stretch several hundreds of metres onto the apron providing practicality, efficiency and comfort for the busy airliners and their many passengers.
However, for the passengers, these new and bigger terminals with multiple fingers displayed one fundamental flaw: the distances needed to be covered by foot were at times rather extensive! An animated movie from 1958 told the tale of how air travel used to be a romantic prospect full of anticipation as a new adventure commenced for each passenger. Now it was being replaced by massive building structures leading to marathon walks just to get from your car and through the airport to the promised land of jet transportation. This short movie was the initial brainwave which led to the famous designers Ray & Charles Eames designing the new and mobile airport lounge.
The American state of Virginia required a new and bigger airport, and it was here that these mobile lounges were first utilised to aid passenger comfort. The airport was named Dulles International Airport and opened in 1962 with its modern terminal designed by Finnish-American Eero Saarinen becoming a true landmark widely acknowledged for its simple and graceful beauty, suggestive of flight.
So when the Dulles International Airport opened just west of Washington DC in 1962, there wasn’t a single finger to be seen anywhere. Instead, after the passengers had checked in on the one side of the terminal building, they merely had to cross to the other side of the building where a row of doors opened up to a fleet of mobile lounges. As such, while the aircraft was being prepared for flight further out on the apron, the passengers could sit back and relax in these waiting areas while enjoying a cocktail from the bar. The FAA Aviation News even reported in 1965 that the short wait was made all the more pleasant thanks to another new invention: ambient waiting room music.
A quarter of an hour before departure, the doors to the mobile lounge would close and the entire lounge would pull away from the terminal building and drive towards the waiting passenger aircraft. When it arrived at the aircraft, the passengers could walk straight through the aircraft door and find their seat. Once empty, the mobile lounge would return to the terminal where it once again became a waiting room. Of course, the reverse applied when moving passengers from an aircraft which had just landed and to the terminal. This practical arrangement shortened walking distances significantly for the passengers.
The mobile lounges at Dulles Airport were behemoth vehicles – each weighing in at a rather substantial 76 tons. They could transport 90 – somewhat surprised – passengers at a time with a topspeed of 40 km/h. And for a while at least, they managed to reinvent the entire concept and structure of major International airports.
But nowadays, there’s no lounge on wheels awaiting us the moment we step out of an aircraft. The number of terminals, concourses, fingers and gates at major airports has increased substantially and airports now spread over vast areas. The modern solution seems to now consist of moving sidewalks, escalators, underground driverless trains and finally airbridges of various shapes and sizes to access the aircraft.
At least a part of the reasoning behind this change probably comes down to driverless trains being more cost effective than the mobile lounges – which of course required drivers. But there’s another, less quantifiable, aspect which comes down to mental perception and the change our society has gone through these past sixty years. Passengers arriving from a longhaul flight these days, would most likely view the prospect of being transferred within the confines of a mobile lounge as a burden – not as the luxury it was presented as in the early sixties. Now, travellers value even the tiniest form of autonomy which hardly goes hand-in-hand with being crammed into a rolling waiting room – no matter how many cocktails are being served…
