Easy solution: assign departure runway with ATC clearance from KUSA or delivery.
As a pilot for a long-haul European carrier it’s my greatest dislike of US airfields. If you change our departure runway as we call for taxi and it’s not what we expect, it’s 10 minutes MINIMUM to recompute performance and load the FMS. Same as if you do it on taxi-out. There’s no point complaining that we’re now sat stationary while we complete the procedure when you could have told us an hour ago.
Even calling 15 minutes before push to get the runway doesn’t help, as it still changes unexpectedly. Lookin’ at you, ORD and SFO.
What else will help and won’t cost 100 million dollars?
- Not assuming that just because we have a daily scheduled flight we’re intimately familiar with the airport.
- Not giving taxi instructions at a thousand words-per-minute and then getting grumpy when you’re asked to repeat it. Publish standard taxi routes for departure and arrival.
- Not throwing a tantrum when we explain that the aircraft cannot physically land on the tiny preferred runway and ask for the longer parallel. “It’ll cause a delay”. Well, not as much as if you need to drag us out of the ditch at the end of the runway.
- Not punishing us for doing so by then making us wait 45 minutes to cross the landing runway afterward.
- Not expecting 180 kts to 4D and then launching into a barrage of abuse when it’s politely declined. Yeah, it can be done but I won’t have a job afterward.
- Enforcing basic phraseology standards. Honestly, it’s not cool to try to sound like Top Gun on the radio, it just confuses everyone else.
You will notice that these complaints can be fixed by exactly one group of people.