Fees At Alb?

[lownslow]

Flying out of Albany today, I saw a strange sight over at Southwest's gates that I had not seen before - a second set of jetways aimed high into the air - about where you would expect an A380 door to be. When the WN flights came in, I realized that these were new over-the-wing bridges that the airport had installed at WN's gates to allow boarding/deplaning from the front and rear doors simultaneously.

My question is - given that according to the airport info sheet, the airport authority paid for these additional jetways at the cost of $2.3 million and they were installed only at WN gates, does WN pay a higher rent for these gates than other airlines pay at ALB? In any fair world, this would be the case, as the facilities provided are far from equal, but the world is hardly fair, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least to see WN get provided with more for no additional cost...

 

[Whadayano]

I thought I read somewhere that SWA was experimenting with them at a couple of airports to see if they cut turn time enough to be worth the investment. Often in the test phase the equipment supplier is subsidizing the equipment with the hope that the customer orders a bunch. So my guess is the name on the side of the bridge is paying the freight while SWA measures the time savings v. the cost.