ATC request Taxi to the gate

Just a simple question. Is this really a true to life taxi instruction?


How does one even start to try to remember all these taxiways?

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What airport is this :joy:
Sorry just re-read it , it’s Madrid I take it

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Pen, paper, and ask them to repeat slower.

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The speed in atc in game mushes instructions together. Even as far as what’s said vs what’s in the atc panel text is annoying.

Grab a pen and paper and an airport chart. A normal human will probably say this slow enough for you to copy correctly on paper and understand the first time.

Or might be in steps, as a big airport is going to have ground traffic.

Or might tell someone to go half the route and follow everyone else to the rw.

For gates, probably more in steps as your gate might not be cleared. Not everyone speaks English well. Last thing you want is Air China just not understanding and assuming go to direct to gates.

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I would have to try Madrid with this set of taxi instructions, but I use Little NavMap to observe a taxiway path. I zoom in to the aircraft parking spot, and then plot the path using the taxiways stated. Haven’t had a miscue in 1500+ hours, in airports large and small. KDEN in Denver sometimes gives you a pretty tortuous path like this. It even works with 1000 foot runways with one taxiway. :sweat_smile:

You can also enable “taxi ribbon” so it shows you way to gate.

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OR , either of these RL options

(1) Request progressive taxi - (Text or even audio from ATC, as it monitors your progress
or
(2) Request a “Follow Me Vehicle”

Both the above would be welcome in MSFS

Either as part of the Core sim – or maybe some smart 3rd Party Dev could make those an option with a suitable ADDON.

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Something I’ve wondered about. How does the “Follow me” vehicle know here to go? Are they simply given the same I instructions as the pilot?

In real life unlikely you would get a lengthy instruction like that, more probable would be stage taxying or a follow me car. FSDTs GSX Pro gives you the ability to ask for one.

This actually was an airliner requesting taxi instructions to the gate :smiley:

Yes, that’s still what I do. I am learning to prepare better and drop this cheat though ;-). This was a request by another (AI?) pilot.

There is a nice “subtle” taxi way direction system that displays a small, discrete moving green dot, that moves along your required taxi route. I could see such a system being implement is real life at some busy airports, along with the lights changing color to indicate stop.proceed.

Sky vector has airports maps of all the places they have charts for, mostly US locations. Have not looked at Sim brief, assume they do as well. You would (assumed) have to enlarge the print to make out where you are and how ATC wants you to go. The taxi ribbon is better for those places I do not know or cannot figure out how I want to get from startup place to RW taking off from. In MSFS, I use taxi ribbon and ATC since I want it sorta real. In X plane I just do it on my own, because ATC is still buggy. I ignore the descend in ATC in MSFS because they always start too late for it.

The little green dot is a great idea, and it could change color as needed to tell you to stop/go as necessary. I have enough aftermarket “things” but hopefully someone or Asobo will implement that idea, as it’s a great one. I think at least 1/4" in diameter so it can be seen easy.

The Follow me truck also works, but at busy places, i.e., KATL, KSFO etc, too many trucks. Progressive taxi would mean dedicated ATC staff direction ground operations which to some degree now, but more would be needed.

As complicated as instructions can be, the worst I think I got was at KATL one time going from ramp to RW for TO, game crashed in the middle of the taxi (months ago) and never re-flew that one.

With an unfamiliar airport you would know what gate you’d be on already and you’d brief the likely taxi route before you get there. Then just stop, write it down, and make sure you have a clear understanding of where you’re going. If in doubt, stop and ask for progressive taxi instructions.

In the Jeppesen FD Pro X app you can draw the taxi route on the screen.

In the sim I use the taxi ribbon even for airports I know because the sim’s idea of the gate numbers differs from real life sometimes.

Yep, I’d be asking for a “follow me” escort for sure! :joy:

If only that were true…

Probably uses the same taxi system as the pink arrows overlay (FSX)