Schiphol conducts trial with self-driving buses on airside(news.schiphol.com) |
Schiphol conducts trial with self-driving buses on airside(news.schiphol.com) |
Lets not kid ourselves. The only real "advantage" would have been one less driver earning a paycheck.
I've been on the airside passenger busses at Schipol. They move faster than the average bus. I cannot see this tiny thing ever competing with those pro drivers.
Immunity to strikes, illness, and all those pesky complexities with meat and flesh
Given that all modern, developed countries have to fight with a population decrease, this is actually a good thing. We have to prepare for a future where there will be barely anyone left to do relatively low-skill jobs, and the earlier we begin to automate them, the better - otherwise, we'll be in quite the bind in a decade or two, once the last boomers that work high into their 80s just to survive are finally dead.
For example in the Netherlands there is a container terminal that has been using autonomous trucks for decades. And since 1999 there have been autonomous busses in Rotterdam.
Yes they are self driving, but not as smart as self driving means today.
These days, they're mostly used to transport international arrivals from the gates (which have jet bridges) to the terminal that contains immigration control. Non-international have an option to use the lounges or a subway (usually depending on which gate you're at and where you need to go - sometime the lounge is faster than the train).
A bit of an anachronism today. But, having grown up in the DC area, they're definitely have a nostalgia factor.
This is when flying Air France/KLM within Europe. Maybe it's better in other terminals.
Worse than Frankfurt? It seems like the only food you can get there is a hot-dog...
It’s not as great as SIN, ICN or the once dominant HKG though.
- which means that ...
what would be far-better and far-easier, is just to use electrical buses instead of those diesel never-ever-turned-off 24/7 smoke-producers-on-wheels. in all airports. poor or Rich..
but no.
I for example know the name only due to flying to/from it during work & travel stint during university times, otherwise nope. Simply not that famous in Europe, even JFK as an airport name aint guaranteed to be recognized here (but more than LAX).
The word "airside" in the title already gives a pretty enormous clue !
A quick look on wikipedia says it has about the same passenger and freight numbers as JFK, though I guess that's more well known because of all the sitcoms set in New York.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They're_Made_Out_of_Meat
* https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...
Aside from that, though... I think it's just that it feels like an additional step. You want to get going -- especially if you're the sort of person who moves quickly through airports -- and now you're just waiting as the lounge fills up. After a long international flight, you don't want to be sitting and waiting.
I won't be sorry to see the mobile lounges go. They were a clever idea at the time, but they're hardly "lounges" these days. They're just buses, at a time when you really, really don't want to be taking a bus.
Somewhat OT, but I just realized I've never flown internationally from Dulles. I've flown internationally a fair amount, and I've flown from Dulles a lot, but never the two together.
Less OT, everything I wrote was for domestic flights.
Yeah they're definitely just buses that can open on each end at this point. They aspired to be lounges and they kind of convey (ha) what could have been. An actual automated mobile lounge isn't that crazy, right? Automation+batter power does make it more appealing.
Changing between terminals at Heathrow is much less fun.
CDG I find confusing.
I decided to stay at a Heathrow airport hotel a while back. Turned out I had to change terminals and I'm pretty sure it took me at least as long as getting a shuttle bus to one of the hotels would have taken.
You often have to walk quite a ways too.
Overall though Heathrow is pretty good among the large European airports.
Which just gives you more time to wait for your bags, I'm afraid. They're building a lot of new infrastructure which might help eventually.