For the most part, airport departure boards in the U.S. list flights alphabetically by destination. This makes sense. It makes it easy to find your flight, whether or not it’s on time, and what gate it’s leaving from.
In much of the rest of the world, it does not work like this. Departures boards are organized by departure time. You have to know your exact departure time to the minute in order to find your flight.
Nate Silver celebrates the U.S. way of airporting, while noting deviation from best practices at LaGuardia:
I'm glad the new LGA is an "international quality" airport. But the American tradition of listing flights in order of destination rather than departure time is clearly better, so this is a mistake. Almost as bad as thinking Celsius is better than Fahrenheit. pic.twitter.com/9eYs4WPH5R
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) September 10, 2024
Silver is correct. Organizing by destination allows passengers to quickly find flights without needing to know their exact departure time. Is my flight leaving at 9:30 a.m. or 9:40 a.m.? It doesn’t matter. I just need to know where I’m going and roughly when.
Flights ordered by departure time only makes sense – and even then, barely – at an airport like London Heathrow where they don’t announce what gate you’ll be departing from until you need to rush to the gate. They do this to keep you from going to your gate, so you’ll stay shopping longer.
Organizing by scheduled departure time gets really confusing, by the way, for flights operating with long delays.
In fairness, organizing by destination makes a lot of sense where there are numerous flights going to the same place. At many international airports, there may be more destinations but with fewer frequencies. That’s not always true. There are plenty of Madrid – Barcelona flights, for instance! But it seems like it’s even more important to organize by destination in the United States.
And not all departures boards are organized by destination here. The one in the Admirals Club I frequent most in Austin has a departures board listing flights by time. But those are just American Airlines flights – and after drawing down their regional jet operation there aren’t nearly so many flights in any case.
Oddly, here’s the departures board in the old terminal 1 at Washington’s National airport (‘the banjo’) showing flights by departure time and not destination.
There are only 9 gates in that terminal so it’s not nearly so hard to find your flight. Still, alphabetically by city would be easier!
Next thing you know the US will be adopting the metric system.
Alpha only makes sense when the whole alphabet can be displayed. You have to wait minutes for your city to come up in rotation; blink for a moment and its passed, and you have to start again.
OK, now do “why do checkers in European supermarkets do their job sitting, while in the US the job is done standing”?
Here here!
Alpha is also best when you want to find alternative flights to the same destination. I often do this in DFW to see if I can grab an earlier flight. Difficult to do this when you can’t easily find the destination you are seeking.
regardless of how they are listed, it is beyond maddening to look at a departure board and see a rotation of a multitude of codeshare flights making it virtually impossible to find the operating carrier flight number – which should be carrying the majority of the passengers.
Well…at least they should be organized by whatever column is on the left. That board at Washington is quite the jumble.
And I echo David’s comment about finding an earlier flight.
What about supermarket cashiers is so true. Wow. I never thought about it.
It never bothers me because I know the departure time and gate before leaving for the airport. My guess is it helps employees know which flight has not left.
Or, you could just check your flight’s departure time on the airline’s smartphone app. Like normal people do.
@Denver … “normal people” do not own a mobile phone , nor a television , nor a watch .
@Gary … Normal departure boards are listed by time . TWA invented the concept .
@TimDunn … Agree that code share flights ought not be listed .
…unless you’re unfamiliar with English/the Roman alphabet. You wouldn’t like this if it was done in East Asia (China, Japan, Vietnam, etc.).
That said, I otherwise agree. Alphabetic sorting by destination makes more sense.
Sorting by destination rather than time only works when everyone speaks the same language. Is a flight from Madrid to Philly shown under Filadelfia or Philadelphia?
Claiming a destination sort is superior really only works if you want to be ignorant of every other language in the world.
@Ben. We are in the United States. English is the main language here. I doubt we are all considered ignorant because we prefer alpha sorting. By the way, I am a boot and jean wearing country boy who happens to speak Portuguese and Japanese.
And don’t tend to frequent airports. The argument is invalid.