Sacred Off-Blocks Times?
I read in the latest issue of The Controller that IATA is targetting the industry, especially ATC, with its Save One Minute Campaign. Cutting just one minute on each flight worlwide will, IATA estimates, save $4 billion USD fuel costs etc in a year!
However, working against this is the sort of incident which happened to one of my colleagues a few days ago. An aircraft called for pushback but was told to hold position until a turboprop twin had parked on an adjacent stand. The delay was not more than two minutes but the captain complained vociferously and said that he was going to report it. Had he been authorised to push, the inbound turboprop would have had to wait as long as five minutes, with engines running of course.
It appears that achieving off-blocks times over-rules any consideration of overall fuel saving. A con on the part of the airlines so that they can boast they taxied on time even if they didn't get airborne until long afterwards because of slots, congestion etc. Push/pulling to a remote hold without starting engines is a good plan if space allows, but slow taxying to the holding point is hardly fuel efficient.
As my colleague did, I shall continue to give priority to aircraft inbound to the apron where it is only a matter of a couple of minutes delay to a pushback. Unless we get a different directive from management, which would seem to go against the basic principles of ATC - "safe, orderly and expeditious" and all that stuff.
I shall be interested in any comments from crews on this topic.