When I was involved in training and testing marshallers at a large aerodrome in South-East England, we took our responsibilities very seriously. If anyone was involved in an incident whilst marshalling, they were suspended from marshalling pending an investigation. The training was rigorous and was divided up into different segments, starting with a simple 90 deg turn on to stand and stopping on the correct marks up to turning through 180 deg or more. It's quite a thing to be able to marshal a 747 on to stand and get it to stop within 300mm in any dimension. The worst part was when an a/c would come on to stand at night with all lights blazing. I used to give it a 'stop' and cover my eyes up until they got the hint and turned the lights out. If a member of staff hadn't carried out a particular manoeuvre within the past month, then they were accompanied by a supervisor/trainer to be refreshed. The hardest in this regard was marshalling helicopters as they were such infrequent visitors - we usually had one or two experts per shift to rely on. Some of our staff had 'I've marshalled Concorde' badges made up - we occasionally got the paraffin pencil on diversion. Sadly, I never got to be entitled to wear one.
TOO