Vehicles overtaking aircraft
A few posts ago, someone asked about vehicles overtaking aircraft.
Our Manoeuvring Area drivers have 'Freeranging' priviledges in normal visibility.
We teach them
a) Plan your route to keep out of the way of the aircraft
b) if a part of your route means that you are going to pass an aircraft head-on, then keep to the right, i.e. pass port-to-port
c) if you are going to overtake, do so on the commander's side, i.e. drive down the port side of the aircraft.
However, since all our aircraft are (supposed to!) follow the yellow centreline on taxiways and are likely to make turns at intersections, sometimes it makes tactical sense to overtake on the right side. It would be silly to overtake on the left, then have the vehicle/aircrat paths cross shortly afterward.
However, we mostly keep to rule a) above.
If we need to do b) we teach people to pull over so that the crew can clearly see that we've spotted them and are giving way. We normally get a cheery wave but some crews either don't see us or think we're too lowly to acknowledge.
TOO