Isn’t that like taking off to the beach on a summer holiday weekend without a hotel reservation? You’d think gate arrangements would have been made beforehand, especially with a new and difficult to accommodate aircraft.
Good for Delta, Qatar is a land of slavery and the air line is no better.
Such a deceptive headline.
There was a gate, they were just not allowed to use it.
This is a dispute, it seems.
Qatar Airways 1st class service is one of the best in the industry.
Yes, they serve booze.
They usually fly Boeing 777’s to the states though.
Qatar is the best airline in the world! Their service is beyond excellent. Anyone who flies for trips abroad, Qatar and Emirates are amazing as is Singapore.
The A380 requires dual level air jet bridges, because they can sell seats for disabled passengers on both of the aircraft’s decks. Most A380 operators put premium classes of passengers on the upper deck and have economy on the lower deck.
The 747 is able to skirt around this issue by having all classes of seating available on the first deck. Most airlines that still fly the 747 have just additional business class seating albeit more private than main deck business class on the 747’s half upper deck. Basically anyone being booked for the 747 upper deck has to be able bodied enough to climb the internal 747 stairs along with carry on luggage. Those airlines that still offer international first class ususally place that in the nose compartment of the main deck of the 747.
They say you have to show up like 3 to 4 hours before boarding these things. Stupid.
Then you have the Boeing Dreamliners where you can taxi into a small runway...deplane the passengers then turn around unassisted and take off again.
That’s American ingenuity.
The USAF encountered serious problems with its XC-99 transport in the later 1940s and early 1950s. It was too big to be useful. It commuted between the few bases that had runways large enough to handle it and the B-36, the bomber variant it was developed from.
Once you land your jumbo jet what do you do with your passengers? The A380 normally carries between 544 and 644 passengers plus crew. In a dense pack configuration it goes up to 800 plus. So the question is not only where do you park it but how long will it take to unload and how long will it take to get the passengers off the airport.
Unless there are numerous A380s operating every day there is little finical incentive to develop a new terminal to handle the impact of an A380 arrival.
Perhaps this could be a case, in Atlanta at least, where the supporting infrastructure wasn’t upgraded as rapidly as the size of commercial passenger jets.
Ever load/unload a KC-10, 200 passengers, via stairs/ It takes a while and is a real bear in a rain storm.
Well done news4jax.com - that’s a lovely photo of an A380! Journalism at its best. /sarc