At airports where airlines can dictate ticket counter setup & design, I'm not a fan of how AA & B6 have their counters set up, in particular their baggage drop-off lanes. In airports where AA maintained a historically larger ticket counter presence, they seemed to have gutted the desks and mostly use a small podium for two agents. That doesn't seem like alot of work space for said agents. Furthermore, because of the large real estate footprint of the ticket counter, there is also a larger gap between the desks. PANYNJ at JFK likely provided security feedback to AA on this since there are metal barriers to close the gap between the small podiums. Ditto with B6 and those HAL 9000-ish mini-podium setup.
Source: Orlando International Airport "FlyMCO" Facebook PageLately I have been preferring the "common-use" ticket counter setup airports are deploying following a major renovation or expansion (LGA post-rebuild and the recent MCI new terminal come to mind), where the airports dictate the design of the desks. It's a very clean and uniform design which fits with the architecture of the terminal.
If AA & B6 are insistent on using this setup where the airlines can dictate ticket counter design, should they work with the airports on reducing real estate space?
