3 ms·

But the amount of gates is pretty much fixed. As Asia becomes richer you can see large populations now demanding seats. Perhaps the A380 was built a few decades

• volkl48 8y ago
  Maybe in a lot of US/European airports that originally date from the first half of the 1900s, they're too close to the city center and don't have enough land to expand. Even then, they seem to be regularly able to find ways to get more gates in renovations (ex: Newark/EWR's Terminal A replacement is going to have the ability to be expanded for 12 more gates). I'm sure there's an upper limit, but plenty of those older airports can find space for more gates in modern redesigns. Most of the big modern airports were built with massive expansion in mind. Well outside the city centers and with large land areas that they already own (and so won't be developed).
• dx034 8y ago
  You can turn-around a A320/B738 in ~20 minutes (low cost carriers do that frequently), a A380 is really challenging to turn around in less than 1 hour. Furthermore, the A380 will need space of ~2 A320/B738. So per given space and time during peak hours, small planes can actually get you more capacity than large planes. You could change that (boarding A380 through 7 doors, probably faster refuelling) but planes like the A380/B747/B777 were never designed for quick turnarounds.