Dear Friends They look like the house the jetways, plus stairwells. My assumption is that arriving passengers walk through the jetways into the building on the same level for customs, immigration, baggage claim, etc. Departing passengers are in the holding area located one floor above. They need to walk down one floor via stairwell to access the jetway. This satisfies the need to separate arriving and departing passengers for security reasons. If you notice, some of the "walls" even go up to the third level. These might be for VIP lounges. Hong Kong's Chep Lap Kok uses two ramps accessing two floors, one for arriving passengers and the other for departing. In the old days at Kai Tak, there was only one ramp but it moved up and down a floor, depending whether passengers were arriving or departing. That was pretty neat. Russell Ng SIN >----- Original Message ----- >From: <lafrance@xxxxxxxxxxx> >To: <AIRLINE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> >Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2005 2:29 PM >Subject: Questions about this picture > > > > What is the purpose of the big walls between each aircaft? > > http://www.airliners.net/open.file/749691/L/ > > >I see that they contain jetways at the bottom. The buildings they are >attached to look pretty high, as if they were multistory.