PROPOSED TAXIWAY REDESIGNATION EGCC
If anyone's seen the proposals for EGCC taxiway redesignation planned for 2013 then I have to say it's all gone a bit daft! The fact that a taxiway changes direction should NOT mean redesignation. EGCC is busy enough without throwing in even more changes that will only serve (in my opinion) to elicit an increase in taxi errors (something that's already been evidenced to be on the increase). Although the plans are, to my knowledge, UNOFFICIAL and in no way committed yet, I have to make some comments about how I think it SHOULD be done.
I think the fundamental problem is that there are too many taxiway changes for what should be simple inbound and outbound routes. EGCC's just not big enough to need to be more unnecessarily complicated than it already is.
For example, consider taxiing from (say) stand 210 to runway 05L: with the proposals you'd taxi via MIKE, LINK3, NOVEMBER, ECHO, CHARLIE, ALPHA. Not an especially difficult routing but, oh so many changes! It's only going to take a non-famil crew and you could make a right old meal of taxi planning (GMCs take note!)
And stuff coming out of T3 shouldn't need to have two taxiways to get a stone's-throw away to 23R. Just join ALPHA and be done with it. The same is true of 05: just join ALPHA and keep going until you hit the A1 guard lights.
NOVEMBER should really start where LINK3 and NOVEMBER are proposed to link up, and LINK3 should still be part of MIKE - it doesn't need a LINK designation; it's part of taxiway MIKE.
Where ECHO, ALPHA and JULIET are proposed to meet is where the mess is - you can't realistically extend ECHO round C1 because you'd end up losing two holds (E1 and C2). You could leave CHARLIE and DELTA as they are and just run ECHO round the corner to join ALPHA directly.
ALPHA itself should continue past JE and JF and join GOLF so that the whole length is then ALPHA - why stop it at JF and change it into something else (GOLF)!?
And speaking of JE and JF, they should be scrapped because it's a CUL-DE-SAC and it should simply be designated the CUL-DE-SAC (you could have an ENTRY WEST and ENTRY EAST for inbounds; it wouldn't make any difference for outbounds since they'd be joining ALPHA to go either to 05 or 23).
As for AE and AF they both need tidying up, as does this whole BD nonsense. I don't know why they're not just designated the same way they were in days gone by: RET X and RET Y (alright, you could call them RET A and RET J for each end of the runway - what I'm saying is it's not rocket science!)
Just some thoughts - if the proposal as it stands goes ahead I can see truck loads of taxi errors coming. It'd be far simpler to do just that and make the whole affair SIMPLE.
And I've not even STARTED on the south side yet!
Last edited by SATCO; 2nd Jun 2012 at 09:11.