Amobile lounge is an elevated bus-like vehicle used for boarding and disembarking fromaircraft, or for transportation between terminal buildings at an airport.
The mobile lounge was an innovative feature of themain terminal atDulles International Airport, designed byEero Saarinen.[1] Saarinen promoted the mobile lounge concept with a short animated film byCharles and Ray Eames.[2] Dulles Airport was the realization of the concepts expressed in the film. Dulles's designers thought that by shuttling from the main terminal directly to a midfieldjet ramp, they could save passengers from long walking distances amidst weather, noise, and fumes on the ramp. The advent of thejet bridge and construction of the two midfield concourse buildings at this airport canceled out the benefits of the system.
The mobile lounge is used atDulles International Airport in the U.S. state ofVirginia and atMontréal–Trudeau International Airport in the Canadian province ofQuebec. The system was also previously used atMontréal–Mirabel International Airport until passenger services ceased in 2004,John F. Kennedy International Airport's International Terminal inNew York City,Baltimore/Washington International Airport[3] inBaltimore,Mexico City International Airport inMexico City until 2007,Charles de Gaulle Airport inParis and atKing Abdulaziz International Airport inJeddah, Saudi Arabia until the early 2000s.
While it is still used at Dulles Airport, the growth in passenger numbers and aircraft capacity made it impractical to use mobile lounges for individual flights. Remote concourses were constructed, and the fleet of mobile lounges was reassigned to operate a shuttle between the concourses and the main terminal. On January 26, 2010, theMetropolitan Washington Airports Authority replaced the Dulles mobile lounge system for passenger movements between the Main Terminal and concourses A, B, and C with the undergroundAeroTrain. However, some mobile lounges and plane mates remain in use for passenger movements between the main terminal and Concourse D (until the replacement concourses C and D are built and the AeroTrain is built out to run in a continuous two-way loop), to disembark international passengers from all arriving international aircraft (with the exception ofUnited Airlines and certainStar Alliance flights, which are directly served at Concourse C's Federal Inspection Station; and flights from airports with border preclearance) and carry them to the International Arrivals Building, and to convey passengers between the main terminal and aircraft onhard stands (i.e., those parked remotely on the tarmac without access to jet bridges).[4]
PTVs (Passenger Transfer Vehicles) are still in use at thePhiladelphia International Airport at Terminals A-East and A-West. The PTVs are utilized to support international flights in A-East and A-West during peak times, when no regular gates are available.[5]
The Passenger Transfer Vehicle or Passenger Transport Vehicle (PTV) (mobile lounge) is a 16.5-by-5-meter carriage mounted on a scissor truck, capable of carrying 102 passengers. These vehicles were designed by theChrysler Corporation in association with theBudd Company, and are nicknamed "moon buggies" due to their otherworldly appearance. When mobile lounges were first introduced, they had ramps at one end that could be raised or lowered to the floor height of an aircraft. However, after Dulles built the midfield concourses, some of the lounges were retrofitted to be used only for inter-terminal passenger transport. The ramps were removed and doors that could interlock with a terminal building were fitted to either end. Mobile lounges have a driver's cab at each end. The wheels at either end of the lounge can be steered, but the wheels at the end opposite the driver lock into a straight-ahead configuration so that the lounge is steered only by the forward driving wheels.
Early in the space shuttle program, NASA used the Plane Mate system of mobile lounge to moveastronauts directly from the orbiter to crew facilities. A modified vehicle obtained fromBaltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport inBaltimore,Maryland was used for shuttle landings atEdwards Air Force Base. A similar vehicle was used at theKennedy Space Center to take astronauts directly from the orbiter to theOperations and Checkout building, where the vehicle was again lifted up for the astronauts to exit directly onto the 2nd floor of the facility.[6][7]
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Eero Saarinen mobile lounge.
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