Hi,

Is it possible to have the Follow Me car AND the Marshaller on arrival at the gate?

At the moment if I choose the Follow Me car, when I arrive at the gate there is no Marshaller.
Am I missing something?

Thank you and Regards,

Richard.

P3Dv5.2, UGCXv2.3

It's something we haven't thought of.

We'll consider it.

 

Thank you!

Richard.

4 hours ago, DrumsArt said:

At the moment if I choose the Follow Me car, when I arrive at the gate there is no Marshaller.
Am I missing something?

Wouldn't always be the case in real life, but not impossible of course. Most gates use the Safedock system rather than a marshaler. what happens with that, is you go to the head of the stand where there is a control panel, you scan it with your ID badge to activate the Safedock control panel, then you select the aircraft type on a little LCD screen and hit okay. The stand's Safedock display, which is similar to one of those motorway matrix signs. then lights up with the aircraft type name so the aircrew can see it is for them. When the aircraft turns onto the stand, there is an infra-red beam which uses doppler reflections from the aeroplane to measure its range and wingspan so it can provide steering guidance to the pilot, which comprises cues for left/right steering, plus a numerical countdown, initially in meters left to go. When the aeroplane gets pretty close to the stand, the distance to go number adds a decimal, to provide more precision guide for when to stop. This ensures the jet bridge is within maneuvering range of the passenger door for when it is being put on and also ensures that the FEP pantograph will extend far enough to allow a ground power connection.

Usually a follow me car is for one of a few fairly apparent reasons, the most typical being that either an aeroplane crew don't know, or are unsure of their assigned taxi route for some reason, or if there is a tricky/unusual turn on the taxiways. For example, EGCC always uses a follow me car for airliners going onto stand 27 because the aeroplane coming onto that stand has to make a very tight turn which is at a bit of an unusual angle, so it would be easy to miss the initial turn. But once the aeroplane is lined up with the stand's centreline, the follow me car usually naffs off and the Safedock scanner takes over to bring the aeroplane onto the actual stand. Similarly, we usually have a marshaller bring stuff onto stand 44 at EGCC because it has a bit of a weird turn as well and is on the end of a pier, so it kind of makes it apparent that something is coming on stand if you are driving about past the stand since you couldn't easily see the active stand light until you were nearly in front of the stand.

So normally we only use marshals on the remote stands where there is no Safedock, or if the Safedock was knackered and couldn't detect the aeroplane type for some reason, which happens occasionally. The other time we sometimes have to use a marshaller, is if we've had to hit the emergency stop for some reason (usually some plonker driving across the rear of stand road instead of giving way to an aeroplane because they are not paying attention). If you hit the e-stop, often the the Safedock won't reset; so then you have to phone air ops and get a marshaler out. Follow me cars will sometimes escort vehicles with drivers of vehicles who might unfamiliar with the airport, such as construction vehicles or vehicles without the necessary anti-collision lights.

So at most airports its the norm to have aeroplanes taxying to and from their stands without any follow me car, and most of the time they come onto the stands without a marshaler either.