At Edinburgh, the parking allocation is done by the airport authority who take into consideration which airlines need which services.
For example, Ryanair and Flybe park mostly on the southeast apron as they do not require any airbridges, whereas Easyjet, British Airways, KLM etc park up to the main terminal.
There is an internal system viewable to the tower and certain computers at the gates (but not in our crewroom
) that shows gate agents, fuellers, special handlers when aircraft are near the airport, landed and stand numbers etc.
It can be frustrating to be allocated stand 32 on the southeast apron, which is all the way down the end when all the other parking spots are free (this also means pax have to be bussed down) I'm sure its all part of
'the big picture' but sometimes no-one else uses that apron for our whole turnaround!
Another thing is that sometimes all the other stands are free, but we have to hold as our stand is occupied. ATC cannot allocate a new one, so it is a process of calling our handling agents, who then speak to the authority, and you seem to magically get a new stand, just as your original one becomes free
