In the early days of air travel, ladders were used to board and deplane aircraft. Passengers were therefore subjected to the elements and to aircraft noise both prior to boarding and after deplaning. Passengers were also injured, from time to time, in falls from the ladders.
Subsequently, passenger loading bridges were developed to provide a covered walkway between an elevated exit of the aircraft and an elevated location of a multi-story terminal building. The end of the passenger loading bridge adjacent to the aircraft was of a variable height to facilitate its use with different sizes of aircraft with different door heights. At the terminal end, however, the passenger loading bridge was of a fixed height. As such, passengers, whether entering or leaving the aircraft, would arrive and depart from the same elevational location of the terminal building.
Whether using ladders or conventional passenger loading bridges, inconvenience and confusion often occurs within the terminal building at the location where passengers arrive from or depart to, the aircraft. Such inconvenience and confusion is the result of an excessively large number of arriving and departing people moving in various directions. The intermixing of people at such location also amplifies security problems since previously screened and unscreened people are intermixed. Such intermixing further complicates the intended routing of preselected people to and from particular areas such as customs.
Various approaches have been attempted to improve passenger loading bridges in an effort to improve the trafficking of people in and through airport facilities. By way of example, note U.S. Pat. No. 2,581,293 to Read wherein side by side walkways are used on a common passenger loading bridge to allow for movement of people to and from different elevational locations at a terminal building.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,263,253, 3,341,875 and 3,404,417 to Wollard disclose mechanisms for adjusting the elevational location of one end of a passenger loading bridge while U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,184,772 to Moore and 3,412,412 to Kjerulf disclose mechanisms for adjusting the rotational orientation of a passenger loading bridge at the aircraft end.
The vertical movement of the terminal building end of a passenger loading bridge is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. Re 26,859 to Riggles. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,561,030 to Seipos and 4,110,859 to Lichti disclose passenger loading bridges of variable lengths, variable angular orientations and variable heights at their aircraft ends. A passenger loading bridge having its terminal building end at ground level is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,161,049 to Saunders.
More modern passenger loading bridges are disclosed in more recent U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,318,197 and 4,333,194 to Drozd, 4,490,869 to Morin, and 4,559,660 to Lichti as well as French Patent 1,270,168 to Lichti. Additional patents of interest include U.S. Pat. No. 4,842,238 to Toiyama, 2,565,730 to Johnston et. al., and 2,826,280 to Troche et. al. These more recent patents disclose various mechanisms to improve the extensibility of passenger loading bridges as well as their positionability at their aircraft ends both horizontally and vertically.
A vertically adjustable bridge is also in use at J. F. Kennedy International Airport; the terminal building itself is modified to accept the bridge, however, Thus, that structure cannot be retrofit into existing terminal buildings. Although many such advances are noteworthy to one extent or another, none achieves the objectives of an optimum passenger loading bridge which combines the benefit of the prior art practices without their shortcomings, i.e., a passenger loading bridge which provides for the efficient trafficking of people in and through an airport or like facility by being of a variable height at both ends, convenient and simple to operate and repair, reliable in operation over an extended life, and economical to both manufacture and maintain, and usable in relation to any unmodified terminal building.
As illustrated by the great number of prior patents and commercial devices, efforts are continuously being made in an attempt to improve passenger loading bridges and facilitate the trafficking of people through airports or like transit terminals. None of these previous efforts, however, provides the benefits of the present invention. Additionally, prior passenger loading bridges do not suggest the present inventive combination of component elements arranged and configured as disclosed and claimed herein. The present invention achieves its intended purposes, objects and advantages over the prior art devices through a new, useful and unbeliefs combination of component elements, with the use of a minimum number of functioning parts, at a reasonable cost to manufacture, and by employing only readily available materials.
Therefore, it is an object of this invention to provide an improved system for facilitating the movement of passengers at an airport facility comprising a terminal building having a plurality of passenger transfer zones disposed one above the other at the edge of the building.
It is another object of the invention to move people more efficiently within and through a transit terminal such as an airport.
It is a further object of this invention to traffic people through an airport facility via a passenger loading bridge which allows passengers to enter and leave the passenger loading bridge at different elevational locations at the terminal building as well as at the aircraft.
Another object of the present invention is to improve supporting structures for the terminal end of a passenger loading bridge to facilitate its raising and lowering to different elevational locations.
The foregoing has outlined some of the more pertinent objects of the invention. These objects should be construed to be merely illustrative of some of the more prominent features and applications of the intended invention. Many other beneficial results can be attained by applying the disclosed invention in a different manner or by modifying the invention within the scope of the disclosure. Accordingly, other objects and a fuller understanding of the invention may be had by referring to the summary of the invention and the detailed description of the preferred embodiment in addition to the scope of the invention defined by the claims in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.