Hey all! So this suggestion is coming from experiencing busy airports and knowing how hard it can be to keep track of little things. My suggestion is that when you clear someone for various things, their tag or radar icon changes color.
Currently, the progress strip changes color when someone is cleared to land, which is really helpful when controlling Tower frequency. But, there is no way to monitor people this way in other phases of local control, such as takeoff or taxi. This means that if a controller’s attention is diverted, someone lined up could start rolling, or someone that pushed back could start taxiing, and the controller may not notice for a while or at all. Obviously, the ability to review and monitor is a necessary skill and comes with experience, but it could make things easier if this feature was implemented.
My idea is that taxi clearance and takeoff clearance have different colors. This would be either on the progress strip or on the icon, depending on which seems more helpful. They would be different than the green color for landing, and would help identify anyone that misinterpreted a command, or got lazy and didn’t want to wait. Let me know your guys’ thoughts about and/or changes to this request!