Designing Airport Terminals for Transfer Passengers

This paper examines the question of how airport terminals ought to be designed to serve transfer passengers, an issue that designers generally neglect. The first section provides a procedure for calculating the number of transfers at airports in the United States, a statistic previously inaccessible; and shows how this figure has fluctuated at major hubs in recent years. These data also indicate that, as a general rule, the percentage of transfers at American airports equals the percentage of those that are on-line. The second section investigates the relative desirability of pier-finger and gate-arrival terminals, using the passengers' average walking distance as a criterion. Using the data on transfers, it appears that pier-finger configurations are preferable when the rate of total trasnfers exceeds 30%. With appropriate considweration of local circumstances and the fact that transfer rates can change significantly over a few years, this general rule can be used as one of the factors in choosing between designs for airport terminals.