6 minutes ago, iFlySimX said:

Yes there are.

Thanks!

 

5 minutes ago, Fiorentoni said:

Sure there is. But Southwest does its own catering if I remember correctly. On 737ngdriver's preview you can see the LSG sky chefs doing catering. You will find Gategourmet on other airports.
Also you can choose your ground handler in cases where multiple ones exist on one airport (see 737ngdriver's video, again).

Thanks!

Still makes me cringe a bit seeing preview videos with the ground ops not being done correctly in lots of ways, but most of that which is incorrect is a result of what the sim will and will not support and the need to be a bit generic on occasion, so I don't really blame the developers of GSX for these things; they are obviously limited on occasion with what's possible, so in spite of the things where I'm thinking 'Noooo! don't do that, that's really dangerous!', it's still a vast improvement over the default MSFS stuff and will as was the case with previous versions of GSX, be a no brainer purchase for me. 🙂

31 minutes ago, NoobX said:

There isn't private companies handling paints anymore? Like Gategourmet for food, Vinci for airports etc....

 

I wouldnt worry about that too much,  they never turn up nowadays to BA and EZY in the UK  😜

FlyingFabio is currently Streaming the preview, also trying to answer questions and test stuff out 🙂

 

5 minutes ago, Bam2000 said:

FlyingFabio is currently Streaming the preview, also trying to answer questions and test stuff out 🙂

Fabio was just showing the baggage loaders loading the plane from the window view inside the PMDG 737. That view of the baggage loaders loading the plane, from the passenger window view, looked so realistic!

Edited August 17, 20223 yr by abrams_tank

25 minutes ago, Chock said:

Still makes me cringe a bit seeing preview videos with the ground ops not being done correctly in lots of ways, but most of that which is incorrect is a result of what the sim will and will not support and the need to be a bit generic on occasion, so I don't really blame the developers of GSX for these things; they are obviously limited on occasion with what's possible, so in spite of the things where I'm thinking 'Noooo! don't do that, that's really dangerous!', it's still a vast improvement over the default MSFS stuff and will as was the case with previous versions of GSX, be a no brainer purchase for me. 🙂

Now I'm interested. like what? Just out of unknowing curiosity ^^

2 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

After having seen video of P3D GSX on YouTube, MSFS GSX has way better 3D graphics for the people, and IMO, the movement for people also looks more natural and smoother for the MSFS version of GSX.  To me, it's a pretty stark difference between P3D GSX, and MSFS GSX.

Doesn't make it new. Which is what my comment was stating. That is all. Either way, as a former P3D tube flyer, I'm happy to finally have this must-have addon back.

Chewwy94 is streaming it now. Not an indepth look, just using it like it was a normal flight day.

1 minute ago, Victoroos said:

Now I'm interested. like what? Just out of unknowing curiosity ^^

Lots of little things really, most of which as I say are probably beyond the developer's control and only likely to bother super-realism nerds, but to list a few which are not absolutely correct...

There's nobody visible guiding any vehicles onto, or off the aeroplane (i.e. a banksman), which is something which is always used in real operations, you will see this around real aeroplanes if you watch any footage of ground ops; it is to alleviate the risk of damaging the aeroplane.

Many vehicles drive the wrong way onto the aeroplane, i.e. the direction they come from in real life is usually for a specific reason and there are many rules where that is concerned. This is to keep things clear to allow access for other vehicles when operating simultaneously, or to minimise going under the wings and avoiding scimitar winglets, this is really what all those cones which are placed around the aeroplane are about; they are essentially no go area guidance. For example, the only vehicle which is actually allowed under the wings, is the fuel pump truck, and it should at all times be unobstructed from being able to drive off the aeroplane in case of an emergency. In reality the baggage trucks do have to turn a bit under the wings of an aeroplane to get the trailers close enough to the conveyer belt, but they should never be driven right under the wings, instead, always going around the cone placed at the wingtip. Not doing that kind of thing leads to this sort of stuff:

The belt loaders are too close to the aeroplane, in fact they are projecting inside the aeroplane doorway, which is a big no-no these days, we used to do that years ago for onloads, but now it is frowned upon and not really permitted. The belt loaders are unloading and loading the front and rear of aeroplane simultaneously, which is not something you typically do; admittedly it's not unknown to do this a bit if there is a fast spin and the weight distribution is carefully monitored throughout the procedure, but generally speaking, you offload the back first, then offload the front, then you load the front first, then the back; this is to alleviate the risk of tail tipping. Some airliners are more critical in this regard than others, notably the longer variants of the B737 and the ATR 72, where you typically make sure the balance from the pax on board doesn't add to the problems. The worst one for this is probably the 737-900 variants, but in any case, regardless of the type, every rampie knows that getting the weight off the back is typically the sequence to stop the things tipping from being tail-heavy.

This is more like the distance you keep GSE from the aeroplane when loading:

Here you can see where a belt loader is in relation to the loading hatch of an airliner's cargo holds, as you can see, it's well outside the aeroplane:

The tug and bar are invariably connected very early in the ground operation, not typically just before the push. This is because you don't want to discover an equipment issue five minutes before departure, you instead want to have that good to go. Typically this might occur when you are waiting for some other thing to occur, for example, if you are waiting for the outbound bags to show up, or waiting for a load plan to be finalised, instead of just standing there waiting, you get on with other things like that since you are basically running agains the clock on a turnaround, where they can be a quick as around 30 minutes, but more typically are an hour, which sounds like a lot of time, but often isn't when issue occur. So in reality, connecting the tug and bar is often one of the things you do pretty much right after the aeroplane has taxied on stand. There is another practical reason for doing this too, which is that when the tug and bar are connected, the airliner crew can disengage the parking brake to allow the brakes to cool off, and the aeroplane will not roll onto its chocks because it will be held by the tug's brakes. You want to avoid having the aeroplane roll up to its chocks because this can pin the chocks under the tires and make them impossible to remove without pulling the aeroplane forward a bit prior to pushing back, which is annoying. contrary to what most people think, you don't typically shove the chocks right up to the wheeels, because when the aeroplane gets fuelled and loaded, it sits lower and will pin the chocks in place, so more often than not, you stick the chocks in place and leave a couple of inches of clearance.

It's an issue with MSFS that it cannot easily simulate multiple pivot points for a pushback, which is why the default airliner tug in MSFS is one of the 'lifter' types rather than the more commonplace tug and bar combination. GSX developers have done a pretty good job of working around this, for example you can see they have the bar animating some pivoting on pushbacks during turns. Because of this limitation, the GSX animations for connecting the tug and bar are limited in how realistic they appear, notably that the bar is always connected and disconnected on its own, never with the tug attached. So, in real life you fit the steerting bypass pin (GSX does animate this properly, although bear in mind no all airliners actually use a bypass pin, such as the ATR and the CRJ for example), then when the pin is in place, the bar is manually wheeled up to the nose gear and connected. then the tug is slowly driven up to the bar with someone guiding it, then it is connected to the tug, after this, the towbar wheels are raised (GSX does animate that part of the wheels being raised).

When disconnecting after a pushback, the tug applies its brakes, then the aeroplane applies its brakes, then the towbar wheels are pumped down, then the tug is released from the bar, and it backs up about two towbar lengths then turns off to the side and parks approximately in line with the engine so the flight deck crew can see it. The headset person stays at the end of the bar during this tug manuever so they are not placed in any danger from the tug driving around and accidentally swiping the bar. When the tug is clear of the bar, then the headset person disconnects the bar and wheels it to the tug, where the tug driver then connects it to the tug whilst the headset person goes back to the plane and finishes supervising the engine start up, disconnects all the other bits from the aeroplane, closes the hatches, removes the bypass pin etc. The last thing they do is remove the choch they placed at the nose when the pushback came to halt, and they give that to the tug driver so mboth the tug driver and the headset person can both confirm the aeroplane is correctly configured to taxi. Then the tug drives off and the headset person walks alongside it and gives the crew a wave off signal and shows them the bypass pin to confirm it has been removed, which is why it has a great big red remove before flight streamer on it, so the crew can actually see it. These are what the pins themselves look like, the fat one is a Boeing pin, the thinner one is an Airbus pin; to use them, you pull a spring-loaded lever on the nose gear forward so that a pair of holes align, then shove the pin through those aligned holes to hold the lever in place, which disconnected the hydraulics of the nose gear's steering mechanism so it becomes free castoring to allow the tug to turn the nose wheel for the pushback. This is why you show the crew this pin after the push by holding it up with the big streamer attached to it, so they know it has been removed and their steering will work when they commence taxying.

On pushbacks where there is a rear of stand road where vehicles can drive behind the aeroplane, you actually have three people doing the pushback - the tug driver, the person on the headset and a 'road man' who, prior to the push commencing, is signalled be the headset person to go in the road with a set of marshalling wands to stop traffic. If there is no rear of stand road, this person is not required obviously, but when they are, this person stays there until the aeroplane passes over the road onto the taxiway. They are also there to make sure the aeroplane clears any GSE parked in the clearways and to observe that there are no other problems, for example, I was doing this once when a BA A320 began leaking fuel from its wing, so I signalled for the pushback to stop, so some airports have this third man even when there is no traffic to stop.

It's usually the case that pushbacks have some default procedures, which are known as standard pushbacks. What this means in practice, is that most of the time when a crew call for push and start clearance from ground ATC, they will be cleared for push and start and everyone knows where the aeroplane will push to, so there is no other discussion needed. Exceptions to this are if ATC need a 'non-standard push' for example, you might push back and then tow forward some distance to ensure you have a lot of clearance behind to allow another aeroplane to push off an adjacent stand and not be blasted by the thrust of an aeroplane's engines, so it's not unrealistic to have the crew be involved in how an aeroplane pushes back, but most of the time they just let the ground crew manage it, however, what is frequently unrealistic in many flight sim pushbacks, is the point at which the engines are started. Look at this document pictured below. This is the push manual which you find in all pushback tugs, which lists the standard pushbacks for all stand (in this case, tthis is for EGCC).

Although for the stands on this page of the manual which you can see, there are no instructions concerning engine start, for many stands it will state that the engine start must occur at the TRP (the Tug Release Point), but even when there is no instruction concerning this, an important part of why you have a headset person for the pushback, is that the crew cannot see behind the aeroplane and cannot even see their engines, so the headset person watches for this such as a hot start, engine fire of other rare (but not unlown) issues, so they can advise the crew to stop cranking, or apply an extinguisher or whatever. There is in fact a fire extinguisher operation button in the panel where the headset connects on some airliners, so the headset person can do this themselves (the A320 for example, has a fire extinguisher operation control for the APU). Because of this restricted visibility from the cockpit, it is the headset person's responsibility to say when it is safe to crank the engines, since you need about 200 yards clear behind the aeroplane to safely crank the engines without blasting things with the thrust. So normally what happens, is the engines are not started as you see in many sims, i.e. right as the push commences, because it soimply isn't always safe to do so. There are good reasons for this, not least of which is that there is frequently a fair bit of FOD on aeroplane stands, such as bits which have fallen off suitcases, nuts and bolts lying around on the floor and so on. Theoretically, these should all be picked up by the person doing the walkaround prior to the pushback, but they can be missed, so we would normally not crank the engines until on the taxiway regardless of tug manual instructions just to avoid that FOD risk, and we would also try to avoid cranking the engines whilst the aeroplane is going backwards, as this effectively puts a tailwind up the engine's tailpipe, and if there is any tailwind already, this is asking for a hot start to occur, so is not a great idea. So as a general rule, if I'm headsetting, and I daresay most other people do the same when they headset an aeroplane out, I only give permission to crank the engines when we're rolling forwards and in a straight line, i.e. when the tug is pulling up to the TRP. We do try to expedite this with modern airliners, particularly ones with the latest engines such as the 737 MAX and the A320 NEO, because they take a long time to get up to speed (unless they are completely cold), so the sooner you can crank them the better. It's also usually the case that we keep the bar on the aeroplane until we know the crew have a good start, since if there was an issue and we had to pull them back onto the stand, we'd find outselves having to reconnect the bar again. Because of this, we will sometimes crank the engines before we get to the TRP even if it says you need to be at the TRP for engine start, but only if we are sure there is a ton of room clear behind and the engines are not going to be pointing at anything which might be damaged by backblast as the pushback progresses. 

Some airlines actually have rules about when their crews can start their engines too, for example, Emerald Airlines, which operates ATR 72s for Aer Lingus, will only start the number one engine after the pushback manuever is complete, whereas many other operators will crank that one up as soon as they have permission from the headsetter, and likewise they will crank the prop on the number two from hotel mode as soon as they have the nod from the headsetter.

So yeah, some of this is stuff which only plane nerds would be bothered about, and some of it not being exactly like real life in a flight sim is a function of what is and is not possible/expedient for a flight sim, but for people who like to try to be as realistic as possible in their sim airliner operations, these are some things they might like to consider, such as deliberately holding off on cranking the engines for a bit so you're more like the real operation regardless of the sim headset person telling you you are clear to crank the engines when you're not even halfway off the stand. 😮

Having said all this,I did also see a preview video where an Easyjet was being loaded with ULDs, which as far as I'm aware is not the case with Easyjet Airbuses, which I think are all bulk, but then again, I wouldn't wish to stop anyone doing anything they liked in their flight sim, since oit is their flight sim, so regardless of any of this nerdy realism, whatever floats yer boat is cool. 👍

16 minutes ago, Chock said:

The belt loaders are too close to the aeroplane, in fact they are projecting inside the aeroplane doorway, which is a big no-no these days, we used to do that years ago for onloads, but now it is frowned upon and not really permitted.

Well that can be adjusted with the program, all the positions are customizable.

3 hours ago, Fiorentoni said:

They need it to externally control the vehicles and stuff. But you can still use the GSX models and logos without coautl and with the default MSFS ground handling instead (GSX lite), if you are masochistic that is...

... and don't forget to disable your antivirus before updating at each time..., funny!.

26 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

Well that can be adjusted with the program, all the positions are customizable.

Yup, that is one of the things I'd probably do, just because it would annoy me to see it not looking correct if it was possible for me to do something about it, but as I say, most people aren't really going to be that concerned with stuff so long as it is more or less correct.

Just in case people are wondering why you don't shove the conveyor belt's end through the cargo door gap (especially on a 737), apart from the obvious risk of contact damage with the aeroplane, what it does, is reduce the height clearance available for the doorway, which means large items won't fit through the door, notably prams and wheelchairs. This can result in this kind of damage (pictured below) when someone tries to force an upended wheelchair through the gap and the wheels push a bunch of dents into the cargo door (The door retracts inwards and upwards on a 737). Each one of the little numbered stickers on the door is a marker for a small dent or scratch which tallies with a list in aeroplane's log, but you can see how bad the grooves in the skin are from some pillock having forced a wheelchair through that gap on this Ryanair B737, damaging the door's skin pretty significantly in the process:

 

Edited August 17, 20223 yr by Chock

41 minutes ago, Chock said:

Lots of little things really,

Good write up! I do have to say though that a lot of these things vary widely between airports and operators. My operator only cares about a 1” clearance between belt loader and plane. As for pushback, that is usually the last thing hooked up, after bags are done. Mostly due to staffing shortages. During pushback, the tug driver is also on the headset and there are two “wing walkers” on the wing tips. I agree with the vehicle paths in sim being a bit bad but meh, I’m not that picky about it. 

8 minutes ago, Hatch76 said:

Good write up! I do have to say though that a lot of these things vary widely between airports and operators. My operator only cares about a 1” clearance between belt loader and plane. As for pushback, that is usually the last thing hooked up, after bags are done. Mostly due to staffing shortages. During pushback, the tug driver is also on the headset and there are two “wing walkers” on the wing tips. I agree with the vehicle paths in sim being a bit bad but meh, I’m not that picky about it. 

Yup, there are indeed some differences in pushback procedures around the globe. The reason there is what might seem a 'picky' level of attention to this with pushback procedures at EGCC, is that it's an airport which dates back to 1937, then having been expanded and tweaked ever since, not least during WW2 when it was a parachute training facility as well as being a construction and repair site for AVRO and Supermarine amongst others, so it has a less than ideal layout with lots of weird stuff going on where driving around it is concerned, including the necessity for many service vehicles having to cross taxiways in numerous places to get to various locations, thus it has to have very meticulous procedures for the pushes to facilitate safe operatons. Frankly, it would be better if it could be all knocked down and re-drawn with a more sensible layout, but that's not very likely to ever happen, so it is what it is.

Edited August 17, 20223 yr by Chock

So I am watching Fabio's stream right now, and Fabio called up two de-icing vehicles, and he got the de-icing vehicles to de-ice the wings. Not sure why some people are saying GSX for MSFS doesn't support de-icing.  Maybe it doesn't support de-icing fully? But I did see the wings being de-iced in Fabio's stream just now.

Edited August 17, 20223 yr by abrams_tank