ATC IssuesA place where pilots may enter the 'lions den' that is Air Traffic Control in complete safety and find out the answers to all those obscure topics which you always wanted to know the answer to but were afraid to ask.
I think GWYN means the system they have in the USA, whereby a discrete unit is responsible for pushbacks in the aprons, and traffic is presented to ATC approaching the manoeuvring area,
Try, jim_ludlow@ansett.com.au who is responsible for the roll-out of Ansett "controlling" their own aprons. In Sydney since late last year, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane to follow.
Dusseldorf (EDDL)have an interesting system. We (aircrew) obtain our start and ATC clearance as normal approx 10 mins before push but the pushback clearance is obtained by the tug crew on a discrete frequency (not ground). After pushback taxi clearance is as normal on ground. The system works well but apart from reducing the traffic on the ground freq I cannot see the reason for it. Anyone from DUS ATC care to comment?
Continental at Newark work very hard to present traffic on 2 taxiways to ATC to take to the holding points. Whilst riding the jumpseat on a DC10, the Captain remarked that some of the guys are superb at also getting the departure order correct. The lines of traffic at peak times can be huge. At JFK, again on a jumpseat, leaving the International Terminal was a shambles. The Captain insisted on the tug pushing us way out to prevent anyone else getting passed us. Once we were on the taxiway we twice had stop quickly to give way to traffic exiting other terminals apparently without clearance and joining the taxiways before checking in with ground.
At DFW for four of the five terminals, the airlines do thier own ramp control... What a mess <G>... They get them to spots on a WIDE apron just prior to the parallel taxiway where you wait and don't say a word. Ground will get to YOU and say something like MD80 spot 22. You then respond with AAL811 with lima. AAL811 roger, standard taxi runway 17R. We have published standard taxi routes... Works nicely...
RAGBAG Sounds as if it must drastically reduce the R/T loading on GMC, which everyone wants. Presumably the aprons there are either not cul-de-sacs or they're like many of the US cul-de-sacs, which are wide enough to take two lanes of traffic. At Heathrow just about all (if I recall correctly!) cul-de-sacs are single-lane so the problem would arise of integrating the inbounds. How would the tug operators know when a conflicting inbound was about to enter the apron?
The layout at DUS is much simpler than LHR (difficult not to be!) but there is still a pushback sequencing requirement on parts of it. The tug crew are obviously getting their position in the sequence from somewhere, but I don't have any details. Next time I do a DUS rotation I shall try and find out.
Apron Control 
Linear Mode
