You simply have to assume that you need to
push at least twenty minutes before your airborne slot time and lets face it, on a
busy saturday afternoon you may well finish
up in a long queue at the holding point
but at least you are in the queue. Of course
when the flow of departing aircraft are held
up because a local wants to land on 24R to
cut down his taxy time onto stand it does all
become a little depressing.
About a month ago I was down at PMI at about
two in the morning. You know the scenario,
start of the season - empty ferry home, tank-
ing sector so just a quick off-load and we
are ready to go. Not another aircraft has
been seen or heard but when we advise ATC
we are fully ready - surprise, surprise, he
won't talk to you until within thirty minutes
of your theoretical departure time. Now, this
may be practical when its busy but on this
occasion I think it was a 'jobsworth' on duty. We got round it by a little polite
persuasion. At the end of the day I think that all we can do is try and encourage
everyone involved make the quickest possible
safe turnround in order to be ready for push
well ahead of normal timings. The other option of course would be for the planners
to assume all PMI turnrounds to be ninety
minutes regardless of aircraft size. We
could then turn-round the aircraft in an hour
and still have a bit of flex to join the
queue to leave.
Final thought - why do Air Berlin never see
to have slot problems ?