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ApatheticAbsurdist t1_j2f56pd wrote

They don’t repeat numbers to avoid confusion (Don’t want someone saying ”B1“ and someone hearing D1 or E1).

The letter indicates where you need to go as each arm of the terminal has its own set of letters. If you’re familiar with the airport it helps you know whether you want to enter on the north or south security entrance (which is now more a convenience thing but used to be more of a requirement).

This is common practice at many airports. (Source: I have been on over 50 flights in the past year so I see a lot of airports).

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Maximum-Share-2835 OP t1_j2f9rpk wrote

So basically I was asking if there was a greater reason than redundancy for the sake of redundancy itself, someone else brought up the former gate specific security, which would greatly increase the cost of any error

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Maximum-Share-2835 OP t1_j2f9exx wrote

If you're familiar with the airport the number does the exact same thing, and everything is written out and also why we have a phonetic alphabet. I understand those basic "reasons" but each of them is a problem in name only or which has already been fixed capably by maps and Aviation writ large in general. This is why most airports I go to use the basic letter number system, as though it were a file system (a1, A2, b1, b2, etc)

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ApatheticAbsurdist t1_j2fjx04 wrote

I disagree with you. I fly a lot. I can know where 5 different letters are I will not know for certain if 36 is in row C or D unless I know exactly which gate of 60+ gates is in each gate house. 5 letters are much easier to memorize the locations of than 50-80 gates. I don’t look at the map at DCA at all. If they had numbers I’d probably need to, but this system helps it so I can get from the metro to my gate in less than 10 minutes.

It speeds things up and I do not see how it harms anyone beyond trigging OCD aversion in some people.

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Maximum-Share-2835 OP t1_j2fll6e wrote

That's fine, I feel like I said that wrong and implied I was advocating specifically that, I don't get the redundancy, not that I dislike alphanumeric systems

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