What is a gate? A gate is a spot were an airplane parks, like a driveway, or a garage. Gates also use names. They use a letter followed by a number to form a gate number. Gate names are very important. If we didn't have names for the gates, pilots would have to find there own gates, and if you were at a busy airport with heavy traffic, you would waist a lot of time searching for one that's open. Because of this great gate system, pilots can be assigned open gates ahead of time.Ramps are those long hallways on wheels that connects the terminal to the airplane. It can come in all sorts of sizes and shapes. Sometimes there aren't any ramps at all. Airports that don't have ramps are usually smaller airports, that don't have at lot of heavy traffic.
Taxiways are one of the most cool, challenging, important, and useful components of an airport. Taxiways are like roads for airplanes. They help aircraft navigate around the airport. Each taxiway has a name, just like gates and runways. Taxiways have a letter, and sometimes a number after it.
The picture above is a photo of a taxiway sign. On the left side there is a black square that has the name of the taxiway you are on. In this case the letter is B. The right side tells you what taxiway you would be on if you turned to the direction of the arrow. Here's an example of how taxiways work. As you probably know, streets have names too. If you were planning a trip starting from Chicago to Denver, then you'd probably grab a map and write down all the names of the streets that you need to be on to get to your destination. This is the same principle used by taxiways. So how do I know which taxiways to taxi on? This question has a simple answer. You need a Airport Diagram. An airport diagram is a map that has a complete layout of the airport. It gives you information of the runways, taxiways, terminals, etc. I'm going to talk on airport diagrams in more detail in the future.When you think about it, E, C, B, D, G, T, and V sound a lot alike, especially when you using a radio in your airplane to communicate with the ATC. In aviation we don't say the letters, we use a simple name for each letter, so that we don't get mixed up with the letters that sound alike. This new kind of ABC's is known as the PHONETIC ALPHABET. The phonetic alphabet has names for each letter. If we look at the picture above, ATC wouldn't say taxi via B then turn right onto B3. He would probably say something like taxi via Bravo, then turn right onto Bravo 3. When you want to say the letter B on a radio you would say the word bravo instead. If you wanted to say the letter G, you would have to say the word golf, and so on. You will later have to memorize the whole alphabet, but don't worry about it for now.
Taxiways, ramps, gates, there all really cool parts that make up an airport. I hope you learned something new, and maybe something useful.
If you want to have a shot at memorizing the phonetic alphabet, click the link bellow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FAA_Phonetic_and_Morse_Chart2.svg
