Gates, boarding bridges and remote stands: how parking positions are assigned

You are standing on the deck, the long-haul jet rolls in – and does not turn toward the bridges right in front of you but disappears into a corner of the apron that you can barely see. That is rarely chance. Behind every airport parking position is planning that balances aircraft size, security areas, ground times and the airlines’ wishes. This article explains which kinds of positions exist, how gates, boarding bridges and remote stands are connected and by what logic airports assign their spots. With this knowledge you will read the apron very differently on your next visit.

The short answer

An aircraft parks at a parking position (stand) on the apron. If it is right at the terminal, airports speak of a contact stand – usually with a boarding bridge, sometimes with stairs. If it is farther out, it is a remote stand: passengers ride the apron bus there and board via stairs. Which aircraft stands where is, as a rule, decided by the airport – in advance according to the schedule, continuously readjusted on the day of operation. What matters most are the aircraft’s size, the flight’s security area (for example Schengen or non-Schengen), the airline’s terminal and the ground time.

Gate and position: two terms, one process

In everyday speech people say “the aircraft is at the gate”. Strictly speaking, that means two things:

• The gate is the boarding area in the terminal – the waiting room with a desk where boarding passes are scanned.
• The parking position is the marked spot on the apron where the aircraft stands. It has its own designation, which does not have to match the gate number.

At a contact stand, gate and position belong together firmly: from the gate, the bridge leads directly to the aircraft door. With remote stands the assignment is looser. A so-called bus gate in the terminal can serve flights to entirely different positions one after another – the bus brings the passengers to wherever the aircraft happens to be standing.

The apron itself is the area where aircraft are handled, refueled, loaded and parked. It belongs to the security area and is to be distinguished from the taxiways and runways. How the taxiways and holding points leading to the apron are designated is explained in the article on taxiways, holding points and signs.

The types of parking positions

Even though every airport has its own designations, positions can be roughly divided into four groups.

Position type	Passenger connection	Typical users	What you see as a spotter
Contact stand with bridge	boarding bridge directly from the gate	network airlines, long-haul, short-haul at big hubs	aircraft partly hidden by the bridge, good view of docking and pushback
Contact stand without bridge	on foot across the apron, stairs	low-cost airlines, smaller airports	clear side view, lots of activity around the aircraft
Remote stand	apron bus and stairs	regional traffic, charter, peak times, large aircraft during bottlenecks	often far away, but completely free-standing aircraft
Parking stand	no passengers	aircraft with long ground time, overnight, before maintenance	quiet subjects, but mostly away from the decks

On top of that come special areas: cargo aprons with their own positions, areas for general aviation and business jets, maintenance aprons in front of the hangars and de-icing pads. How aircraft are de-iced before takeoff in winter is covered in the article on aircraft de-icing.

Bridge or stairs – a question of business model

Not every airline wants the bridge. Bridge positions generally cost more, and docking takes time. Many low-cost airlines rely on short ground times and let passengers board via stairs at the front and rear at the same time. Where that is possible, their aircraft therefore often stand at positions without a bridge – even if bridges are free next door.

Smaller airports sometimes manage entirely without boarding bridges. In Salzburg and Innsbruck, passengers walk across the apron or ride the bus. For you that means: from the Salzburg observation deck you see the complete aircraft without a bridge covering the door.

Size decides: code letters for positions

A parking position is not an arbitrary parking lot. It is designed for aircraft up to a certain size – mainly wingspan and length are decisive, plus the clearances to neighboring positions, buildings and taxi lanes. For airport planning, ICAO classifies aircraft mainly by their wingspan into code letters:

Code	Wingspan	Examples
A	under 15 m	small propeller aircraft
B	15 to under 24 m	smaller regional jets like the CRJ200, many business jets
C	24 to under 36 m	Airbus A321neo, Boeing 737-800, larger regional jets like the E190
D	36 to under 52 m	Boeing 767, Airbus A310
E	52 to under 65 m	Airbus A350-900, Boeing 777-300ER
F	65 to under 80 m	Airbus A380, Boeing 747-8

A Code E position can therefore accommodate a widebody jet, but also two narrowbody aircraft side by side if it is marked for that. Many large airports use such flexible positions with multiple stop lines: if there is no long-haul flight, two short-haul jets park there. That makes planning more flexible than the number of positions would suggest.

Boarding bridges: more than a walkway to the aircraft

The boarding bridge is a movable, covered walkway between the terminal and the aircraft door. A bridge operator steers it to the door, a padded frame rests against the fuselage, and during loading and unloading the bridge compensates for changes in height when the aircraft sinks lower from loading.

Many bridges also have supply lines attached: ground power and conditioned air. With these the crew can shut down the auxiliary power unit (APU) earlier, which reduces noise and exhaust on the apron. If you see a thick hose running from the bridge under the fuselage, that is usually exactly this air supply.

Widebody aircraft often dock with two bridges so that passengers get off faster. With the A380 there is a special feature: airports with A380 traffic have a bridge at some positions that reaches directly to the upper deck. Such positions are scarce, and that is exactly why you see the A380 at an airport almost always at the same few spots.

How the aircraft parks with pinpoint accuracy

For the bridge to fit, the aircraft must stop very precisely on the stop line. There are two ways to do that:

• Marshallers: A person in front of the aircraft gives direction and stopping point with hand signals or light wands.
• Docking systems: At many contact stands, a display hangs in front of the cockpit showing type, distance to the stop line and lateral deviation, guiding the pilot to the exact stop. Modern systems detect the aircraft by sensor.

After the stop, chocks are placed at the wheels, and only then does the bridge move up. What happens next – unloading, cleaning, refueling, loading – is described in the article Turnaround: how handling works.

Who assigns the positions?

At most large airports, stand allocation is the airport operator’s job. The process has two levels:

1. Advance planning: Based on the schedule, stand planning distributes the flights to the available positions – often with software that takes fixed rules and priorities into account.
2. Day of operation: Delays, aircraft swaps and disruptions upend the plan continuously. Then apron control adjusts the allocation and guides arriving aircraft to the right position. You can read more about this job in the article on apron control.

Airlines, handlers and ground handling services receive the allocation and plan staff, buses and equipment with it. If a position changes at short notice, passengers often notice it in the gate change on the display board.

Schengen, non-Schengen and the consequences for the apron

A large part of the position logic in Europe follows from the separation of security areas. Passengers from non-Schengen countries have to go through border control, passengers from the Schengen area do not. Terminals are therefore divided into areas, and a position is usually assigned to one of them. If an aircraft comes from London and then flies on to Milan, it fits no pure position, basically – either it parks at a switchable position, or the passengers are led by bus through the right area in each case.

For spotters this explains many patterns: at large hubs, long-haul flights usually park in separate non-Schengen areas. At Munich Airport, the satellite of Terminal 2, used by Lufthansa and its partners, separates Schengen and non-Schengen gates on two levels stacked on top of each other. Since April 2026, Terminal 1 also has its own pier exclusively for non-Schengen traffic, which also includes positions with three bridges for the A380. If you know where these areas are, you also know where the widebody jets stand.

Towing: when the aircraft changes spots

If an aircraft sits on the ground for many hours – such as a long-haul jet that lands in the morning and only flies back in the evening – it blocks a valuable contact stand. It is therefore often towed to a parking stand after deplaning and brought back before departure. Aircraft tugs are used for this, often towbarless models that lift the nose gear. How they work is explained in the article on aircraft tugs; the pushing back before departure is described in Pushback explained.

For you, towing operations are often a small opportunity: the aircraft rolls slowly across the apron with its engines off, sometimes in places you otherwise do not see – and sometimes closer to the deck than in regular operations.

What this means for your spotting plans

With the stand logic in your head, you plan visits more purposefully. A few rules of thumb:

• Widebody jets stand at few spots. Because Code E and Code F positions are scarce, long-haul aircraft usually park in the same areas. Find out which they are and choose your spot accordingly.
• Regional traffic often stands outside. Turboprops like the models from ATR and small regional jets at large airports often park at remote stands, sometimes far from the observation decks.
• Decks mainly show contact stands. From the Hamburg observation deck or Zurich’s viewing terrace B, you see handling at the bridges up close – registrations are easy to read there.
• Aerodrome charts reveal the layout. In the charts from the Aeronautical Information Publication, positions are drawn with numbers and often with the approved size. How to read them is explained in the article Reading AIP aerodrome charts.
• Apron tours open up the outer areas. Many airports offer tours across the apron. There you also get close to remote and parking stands that are invisible from public spots – more in the article on airport tours and apron bus tours.

What you want to see	Where you are most likely to get lucky
Docking, bridge, pushback	deck with a view of contact stands
Complete aircraft without a bridge	smaller airports without bridges, positions with stairs
Long-haul on the ground	non-Schengen areas and widebody positions of the hubs
Regional and charter traffic	remote stands, often only close on apron tours
Parked aircraft, rarities	parking and maintenance aprons, mostly only with a long focal length

An example from practice

Take a typical morning at a hub: between six and nine o’clock many long-haul flights land, while the first short-haul waves depart. The contact stands are full. A long-haul jet arriving early gets a bridge position in the non-Schengen area so that connecting passengers reach passport control quickly. After deplaning, it is towed to a parking stand to make room for the next wave. A regional flight arriving at the same time lands at a remote stand – the passengers ride the bus to the terminal. In the afternoon the long-haul jet returns to a bridge, this time perhaps a different one.

For you this means: one and the same aircraft can stand in three different places in a day. If you are on the deck early, you may only see it from afar; if you come in the afternoon, you may see it at the bridge right in front of you. How hubs bundle their arrival and departure waves is described in the article on hub waves.

What to watch out for

• Positions change at short notice. What applied yesterday may be different today – delays and construction work shift the occupancy.
• A gate number is not a position. The display in the terminal tells you the gate, not necessarily where the aircraft stands.
• Photographing in the terminal has rules. If you photograph from the gate, observe the airport’s house rules; notes on this are in the article Photography in the terminal.
• Stick to public spots. Remote stands are often close to the fence – that is no reason to cross barriers. What is allowed is summed up in Is plane spotting allowed?.

Conclusion

Parking positions are the result of daily puzzle work: aircraft size, security area, the airline’s terminal and ground time determine whether a jet ends up at the bridge, at the stairs or outside at a remote stand. For spotters, there is a pattern in it that can be learned. If you know where widebody jets stand, where regional traffic parks and which positions are visible from the deck, you will be in the right place more often.