Brad Ideas - Cell phone user airport marshalling area - Comments

Howard — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 11:10:12 -0700

They have this at FLL. (Ft. Lauderdale.)

michael — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 06:22:50 -0800

Salt Lake City as well (except without the free phone booths for the passengers without cells--do Tucson and IAH have that?)

Oakland, on the other hand, operates instead on the principle that at high-traffic times the approaches to the airport itself serve as a parking lot. Then you can get off the plane, call the person picking you up, and get your ear chewed off about how irritating the airport is...

Bob — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 12:03:14 -0800

This is already available at GW Bush airport in Houston

Lex — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 23:01:05 -0800

This is already happening at the Tucson Airport in Arizona -- good call!

Cell phone user airport marshalling area

brad — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 17:36:12 -0800

Update: Well, clearly this was already being done when I asked for it, just not at the airports I flew from. It's now close to universal.

Airport pickup is becoming another nightmare in some cities, with police barring cars from waiting for passengers, causing people to circle.

Airports should take a piece of parking lot and turn it into a marshalling area for people with cell phones. If you are picking somebody up, and you have a cell phone, you go to the marshalling area, where cars wait in parked lines like a parking lot. When you get a call from your passenger saying they have bags and are ready to go to the curb, then you go out and get into a special passenger pickup lane. You go right to the numbered spot your passenger told you. For passengers without cell phones, phone booths will sit at the exits of course.

For those not with cell phones, there is of course short term parking or the endless circling, though generally you want less of that.