Who and where - and possibly why.

[RedhillPhil]

Something that's always made me wonder.
Who decides which stand an airliner berths at upon it's arrival at the airport?

[neroliie]

Oh nice one, I've wondered that a few times myself.

At Schiphol, as far as I can tell, there's some kind of rough division of the gates into groups designated by a letter which I think refers to one of the...oh what's the word...'leg of the spider' if you will.

Oh! Apparently they're called piers. I should have been able to guess that myself:
http://www.schipholview.nl/images/gates.gif

The budget airlines have H-gates, and the pax get lots of exercise walking up and down the steps ;)

I think KLM and BA flights usually go from (and arrive at) D-gates. I once flew Swiss but don't remember the gate no :}

So maybe the company rents the potential use of a bunch of gates, and then which aircraft goes where at arrival is determined by more immediate factors of which gate in that group is open at the time?

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

It's usually the airport authority which sends the information to ATC for transmission to pilots.

What happens prior to that can be quite complex. An airline will operate from a particular terminal but stand allocation by the airport authority within that terminal will depend on a number of factors - airline, aircraft type and size, jetty serviceability, whether domestic or international, etc, etc. If a large terminal is for the exclusive use of one airline, that airline will decide parking arrangements within the terminal in liaison with the airport authority.

That's very basic, but a lot more is involved.

[RedhillPhil]

Thankyou for that. As someone who does it for trains at a terminal station I wondered what the air equivalent was.

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

OK Phil. Aaahhh... Some colleagues of mine visited Clapham Junction signal box many moons back. They told us you're all as mad as air traffic controllers!!

[RYR738_driver]

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 :ugh:) 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 :D

[RedhillPhil]

They are in the Victoria 'box at Clapham Junction.:ok:

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

Somebody is bound to put me right, but didn't Sir Hudson Fysh, founder of QANTAS, say something like: "With a railway you have one or two lines splitting into many platforms at stations. In aviation you have many routes all arriving at one runway - you don't stand a chance!"

(Correct version would be much appreciated).

A fun tale of stand allocation at Heathrow in the 70s.... A great bunch of people worked in a department called Telemove, on the 5th floor of the tower. The comms officers there monitored the various R/T channels and sent the information by coded teletype transmissions to various agencies around the airfield. The airport authority would then send details of stand allocation to Telemove who would then transmit it around the airfield.

ATC, and other agnecies, received these signals via a peculiar Exchange Telegraph paper tape device. In the Tower, it sat at one end of the Ground control desk and the half inch wide paper tape passed through a metal runner in front of the GMC man, who scribbled down callsigns and stand numbers on a sheet in front of him to pass to landing aircraft. After writing it on the GMC sheet it was usual practice to cross out each stand allocation with a black felt up pen so you knew where you'd reached. Occasionally (more so with heavy handed controllers), as the pen marked the tape, the tape would break.... one end rapidly disappearing into a waste container at one end of the desk whilst at the other end the tape with the stand numbers would jam up the machine!!! Luckily our brilliant ATC Assistants (God's own) would spring into action and retrieve the broken end of the tape as it was about to disappear into the bin. Then, with the aid of some thin adhesive tape they would fix the ends of the tape together as if splicing a magnetic tape!! Sometimes it took a minute or two to retrieve the tape from the bin so the GMC controller would pull the new tape out of the machine so he could continue to issue stand numbers to landers...This often meant yards of paper tape all over the GMC desk. Go alone knows what visitors must have thought when they ascended the Tower stairs and saw the GMC Man standing up with bits of paper tape everywhere, including hanging round his neck!! It was probably this which started the well-known ATC expression.... "He's got it round his neck".