So as you (may or may not) know in real life pilots need to get ATC clearance to start their engines. They also can get permission for start and pushback. However in IF you can start your engines whenever you want. So how about this, to build even more on realism you have have to request permission to start your engines. This request would be on ground frequency and would go “XXX Ground N120MD, requesting engine start” Then ATC would say “Engine Start approved, N120MD” Now you can also request to pushback and start your engines too and would sound like this “XXX Ground, N120MD requesting engine start and pushback” Then ATC would say “Start and Pushback approved, N120MD” and could also say “expect runway X”. What do you guys think? I think this could add more realism to IF.
Not every airport requires you to specifically request engine start. Where I work, under normal circumstances when being pushed back the ramp crew lets them know when it’s ok to start the engines. At a typical gate it’s once they are about halfway out but if it’s at an airport with alleyways and such it may be later as you should try and not blast people at nearby gates.
If the plane has a broken APU and needs an air start, that is when they would request permission to start the engines, so aircraft potentially going behind the one with no APU are aware that his engines are running.
Since IF doesn’t have APUs I don’t really see this as needed, I’m sure this request has been brought up before.
True. But I’m sure that really won’t matter until things like ground vehicles, pushback truck etc comes out. Until then in certain airports it could only be a request in that specific airport.
Aircraft always have right of way, ground vehicles are responsible for remaining clear of engine blast. I don’t think many places require ground approval for engine start and those that do, it is not so that they don’t blast somebody. I doubt we’ll ever see ground vehicles in IF so again I don’t think we really need this, and this will make the announcement of commands even longer which can really bog down a busy airport’s ground frequency.
That’s your opinion. I personally don’t mind waiting on the ground. And plus whenever I control a ground frequency its never as nice as controlling tower frequency. But I see your point.
Since we’re talking about ATC, i’d like to see ATIS again now that we have global.
I sorta like the idea, but the terminology would sound better “Request push and start”, no “start and push”. If ever gets implemented, it would be better to have boths requests in the same command as stated^^, a request for pushback and a request for engine start would just clogged the frequency on busy airports I guess.
True. But there could be a good way to combat this. If an airport was extremely busy ATC could just say “Attention all aircraft, Airport is busy, Start engines at users discretion” that would probably work.
This is more detailed than the duplicate, but the other one has almost 70 votes already:
I think mine should stay open as the other is pretty old and mine does include lots more info. Plus it was inactive after 7 months and then got necroposted. But I will let the mods decide