I’m sitting here at KLAS gate terminal B, listening to Ground frequency while I wait out the gate hold.
ATIS clearly states that a gate hold is in effect, however there is a constant stream of pushback requests coming in.
This is frustrating from a pilot perspective, I can imagine it’s equally so for controllers.
I assume the ability to do this is there, because when “No pattern work allowed,” you can’t request to remain in the pattern.
Well you can always put it into #features to try and get in but I think this I would be tremendous idea and should get in. As an IFATC I always get multiple pushback request even when I have told that person hold postions and gate hold is on
whoops, I meant to put it in features but put it in the wrong spot
I can imagine the controller releasing the gate hold and a slew of pushback request break the game lol
Haha very possible.
Maybe it’s feasible to work out a way to allow pushback depending on where you’re parked?
Or even add a warning mabye, like “gatehold in effect, do not request pushback” or somthing who knows.
Personally I think you should be able to request pushback. It sounds weird but when to rewoly busy sometimes it needs to be in for extensive periods of time in which case having it on means you know who wants to push ie they request pushback once and you can clearly see they are ready and you know who’s first. Then you let them go in order and when there is room for deps to clear out. It might seem easier to remove the option but it would create issues elsewhere for ATC in my opinion.
that makes sense to me. Ultimately what I’d like to see is a way to keep the same people from requesting pushback every minute or two.
Yes that’s the issue here. When they don’t stop after one request.
It might be complicated to implement, but it’d be nice to have a way to queue those who are waiting during a hold without them requesting.
From the point of view of a controller I think this could be a useful feature. It happens that I have to put gate hold and that I try to get as many planes out as possible.
On the one hand there’s an obvious problem which it would solve. Gate hold as mentioned can be handy when you have a long queue and you want to get as many planes out as possible. But how’s that possible when you’ve got 50 angry pilots spamming the frequency? Can’t report them because you have to spend time warning taking screenshots etc… so you just end up wasting everyone’s time answering and saying check help pages and hold position.
On the other hand it is true that as soon as you’d take off Gate hold it would be a mess with everyone asking for pushback. And if you clear everyone you’ll have to spend time avoiding conflict and then putting a new gate hold because there’s no more room on the taxiway. Having the possibility to ask for pushback you’ll have a few that spam, but you’ll also have a lot that will be patient. Like that when you remove gate hold you just take one at a time of the ones that requested and it avoids creating a mess.
In conclusion I think that I would like it simply because it’s sounds ridiculous to get asked for pushback when gate hold is in effect. It’s more for the sake of common sens and logic that I am voting for this request.
What would help is if you could only request a pushback once. The disturbance isn’t people requesting a pushback, it’s the people who spam pushback after they’ve been told to wait for more than a minute. That’s what makes it hard to maintain order on the ground. I was the controller at LAS giving all the gate holds and boy! It was frustrating.
Yes this is the root issue that I’m trying to get across.
I was listening to you issuing “hold position” every 10 seconds it seemed haha. Props to you.
Trouble is, if pilots can’t request pushback they would likely push of their own accord rather than wait.
ghost em! Isn’t that the point of the expert server? Follow the rules or don’t fly here.
That’d make a lot of ghostings!
I understand. It’s probably a common thing that happens around here (i’m fairly new to IF, joined shortly after global) but it feels like the realism and seriousness of the expert server is severely diminished by things like this.
I agree. Unfortunately it’s not really possible to have an expert level of realism. There’s no way to limit the access to only people that are “experts” simply because you can’t just put an algorithm to filter them out. Requests like these are requests that limit how much those people that don’t fly like “experts” can do. It’s a bit of an easy solution but I have to admit I can only see this as a solution. We can’t have everything unfortunately…
(I put experts in inverted commas because there aren’t really “experts” and non “experts”. There are people that are learning more than others. We all still have things to learn it’s normal. Some might seem annoying but quite often they don’t see what they’re doing wrong they’re just learning.)
I’m a bit double on this:
Part of me likes the idea of disabling requests, depending on ATIS settings. Currently there’s only one feature disabled and this is to request to remain in the pattern, when ATIS setting ‘no patterns’ is on. But you can take this as far as your imagination can carry you:
The other part of me says: come on, it’s Expert server. They should know…
But then, many don’t know, don’t they…
I feel this is a good idea but since you can’t request pushback I would assume ground would just tell you to push back but what if your not ready to pushback? I feel there should be a way to say you are ready to push back without actually requesting it