Re: [ietf-smtp] lounging around

["John Levine" <[e-mail]>]

In article <[e-mail]> you write:
>The mobile lounge was an impressively good example of a very good idea 
>what totally didn't work as intended.

I'd flip it around -- the mobile lounges worked (still work) exactly
as intended, but the world changed underneath them.  When Dulles was
designed in the 1950s, air travel was mostly point to point, so the
passengers, dressed in natty suits and dresses, would take a leisurely
drive to the airport for their long flight and the trip on the mobile
lounge was a small part of the overall process.  Even so Dulles was
largely unused until long distance planes got too big for National and
in 1966 they limited National mostly to short-haul flights.

The mobile lounges really stopped being usable after deregulation when
there were a lot more flights and airlines went to hub-and-spoke
arrangements with most passengers making connections.  A connection
requiring two mobile lounge trips would be pretty painful.  The other
airport that depended on mobile lounges was Montreal Mirabel which
also had other problems, notably being an hour and a half from the
city without the promised high speed rail link.

Rather ironically, in Europe it remains common for planes, even large
long distance ones, to park at remote stands at the airport.  This is
exactly the situation mobile lounges were intended for, but instead,
you take a conventional bus and then run through the rain across the
tarmac and up the stairs to the plane.

There must be a moral for SMTP in here somewhere.

R's,
John