Unlucky Gate 13

(updated )
Map of the United states. Airports with a gate 13 are plotted as green dots. Airports without a gate 13 are plotted as red dots. Airports with all gates below or above 13 are plotted as gray dots.

A year or so ago, I was traveling through Portland, Maine, and noticed the airport had some ground-level gates numbered 11, 12, and 14. Gate 13 was missing.

In retrospect, this shouldn’t have surprised me. Thirteen is considered to be an unlucky number, and many buildings skip their thirteenth floor, but I’d never thought about an airport skipping its thirteenth gate. I started to pay attention, and noticed that many other airports passed over gate 13 as well.

I finally went ahead and researched the gates in every one of the 396 U.S. primary commercial service airports (airports with at least 10000 passenger boardings in 2018) and made a map, split into three categories:

Larger dots on the map represent larger airports.

Interesting Finds

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