How exactly does atc_parking_type work?

[Benjamin J 751]

I have become more and more irritated by the way ATC assigns me to parkings. It'd give me places so remote of any good location that I'd end up completely ignoring ATC and taxiing my plane to whatever free, suitable gate I could fine. I'd rather not do this of course, but when I see ATC giving me a spot at some lonely cargo apron when there are tons of free gates with jetways available, I just ignore ATC. I then thought that if I change the act_parking_type entry in the aircraft.cfg, it'd help. So, I changed everything to GATE, hoping that would solve the problem. Of course that didn't solve the problem. I come here now, hoping that somebody could give a comprehensive explanation about how this works. I see AI planes taxi to the correct stands, so why can't I? What must I do to have ATC assign me a correct parking place? What does the act_parking_type entry do, and does the atc_parking_codes entry actually do something?

[vc10man 732]

I have become more and more irritated by the way ATC assigns me to parkings. It'd give me places so remote of any good location that I'd end up completely ignoring ATC and taxiing my plane to whatever free, suitable gate I could fine. I'd rather not do this of course, but when I see ATC giving me a spot at some lonely cargo apron when there are tons of free gates with jetways available, I just ignore ATC. I then thought that if I change the act_parking_type entry in the aircraft.cfg, it'd help. So, I changed everything to GATE, hoping that would solve the problem. Of course that didn't solve the problem. I come here now, hoping that somebody could give a comprehensive explanation about how this works. I see AI planes taxi to the correct stands, so why can't I? What must I do to have ATC assign me a correct parking place? What does the act_parking_type entry do, and does the atc_parking_codes entry actually do something?

Excellent question posed,Benjamin,as I too find it quite odd that my MTX AI aircraft park up normally yet like you ATC sends me to some remote corner and often wondered if there was a way to rectify it as like you too I just ignore it. But then MSFS' coded ATC is.........well.

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

Ben, Tom aka 'tf51d' has posted a solution that works for this, in fact I have used it in the past but uninstalled the planes that I applied it to so I need to look for his post again myself. Basically what it involves is inserting the parking code of your airline, ie Delta=DAL, etc, into your user a/c .cfg file. There was and has been some argument over whether it works or not, but when I added the AAL parking code to my a/c that have an AAL livery installed, when I landed I was directed to parking spots that have the same code. There is more to it though than just adding it to the a/c cfg since the coding or wording is a little different that what you use for AI. You might find his post here by searching, I think he mentioned it in the FS9 forum but it still works in FSX since I tried it myself. If you cant find it shoot him a PM and he would probably be more than happy to help you out.

[Benjamin J 751]

I tried that method, but I can't always get it to work, and if it works for some airport, it doesn't work for all airports. I'll retort it though. Any specific airport you know it worked for? Can somebody still explain what these entries really do? What do they tell FSX, and how does FSX use them to decide where to park my aircraft? For example, FSDT KLAX has almost all gates assigned as "RAMP". So, I can imagine that having all parking types in my aircraft.cfg set to GATE only is not going to work. Correct? How can I make sure that I get a GATE preferably, but also avoid this problem with RAMP only at some airports?

[mhlarsen 2]

I tried that method, but I can't always get it to work, and if it works for some airport, it doesn't work for all airports. I'll retort it though. Any specific airport you know it worked for? Can somebody still explain what these entries really do? What do they tell FSX, and how does FSX use them to decide where to park my aircraft? For example, FSDT KLAX has almost all gates assigned as "RAMP". So, I can imagine that having all parking types in my aircraft.cfg set to GATE only is not going to work. Correct? How can I make sure that I get a GATE preferably, but also avoid this problem with RAMP only at some airports?

Short version:Parking codes/types are for AI and not for us humans. Long version:I have to dig up a document I have about how FSX calculates this parking allocation. I remember though that parking codes/types are top priority when AI are allocated, bot lowest for humans.There are some payware around that will let you change your assigned parking spot, or why not just choose one you like and ignore ATC?

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

I tried that method, but I can't always get it to work, and if it works for some airport, it doesn't work for all airports. I'll retort it though. Any specific airport you know it worked for? Can somebody still explain what these entries really do? What do they tell FSX, and how does FSX use them to decide where to park my aircraft? For example, FSDT KLAX has almost all gates assigned as "RAMP". So, I can imagine that having all parking types in my aircraft.cfg set to GATE only is not going to work. Correct? How can I make sure that I get a GATE preferably, but also avoid this problem with RAMP only at some airports?

Hi Ben, Off the top of my head I dont remember any airports it didn't work for, as long as the airport had the correct parking codes and the parking spots were big enough to accomidate my a/c. Anyways, I found the post I was thinking of http://forum.avsim.n...__fromsearch__1 and perhaps it wouldn't always for for you if you had a typo in the section "atc_parking_code=" where it should be "atc_parking_codes=", emphasising the (s) on codes. There is a guide called vip_fsx.zip that was written by David "Opa" Marshall based upon investigations and information developed by Jim Vile and Reggie Fields http://library.avsim...plication%2Fpdf As long as you follow the guide and make sure the a/c are FSX native by checking the .air file, parking spaces are correctly coded and sized, then it should work fine for you. Not sure about the GATE and RAMP thing though, but you could always try using atc_parking_types=GATE, RAMP Make sure to follow the guide in the link because Opa also wrote a VIP parking guide for FS9 as well but it is slightly different and maybe why it didn't work for you in FSX.

Short version:Parking codes/types are for AI and not for us humans. Long version:I have to dig up a document I have about how FSX calculates this parking allocation. I remember though that parking codes/types are top priority when AI are allocated, bot lowest for humans.There are some payware around that will let you change your assigned parking spot, or why not just choose one you like and ignore ATC?

Read the guide above by David Marshall. Using those instructions he's provided it's always worked for me provided I had everything setup correctly and there we parking spots available for my a/c.

[mhlarsen 2]

Read the guide above by David Marshall. Using those instructions he's provided it's always worked for me provided I had everything setup correctly and there we parking spots available for my a/c.

VIP as parking code? Never tried that, but will do so asap.Very nice if I can make it work.

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

VIP as parking code? Never tried that, but will do so asap.Very nice if I can make it work.

You dont need to use VIP as a parking code if you dont want. In my case I just use the airline codes for whatever airliner I am flying. VIP is more or less if you want to save a particular spot for yourself, which might work better if you like to fly corporate jets and have a certain spot you want to park at, but if you use AAL for American Airlines it will just direct you to an open AAL parking spot that is open, has that code, and is big enought to accomidate your a/c.