Until recently, once exiting a runway you could request parking to a gate and Ground would assign a gate number and taxi ribbon to that gate. Sometimes there is a taxi ribbon that leads to a gate, but before you could select between general parking or a gate. I have no addons and this refers to larger airports where this Gates are typically assigned. Anyone else see this happening?
Hi,
Could you give one or two examples of airports where you are seeing this happening, so others could compare their results?
KSEA, KBFI, CYVR, CYYC, CYEG, CYXS are my recent flights that have this issue.
Hi,
I just went to KSEA and did a pattern very quickly. Is this what you are referring to? Not being able to see an option to taxi to gates or to parking?
That’s correct. I’ve been flying the 787 during the last few weeks. I’ll try a different plane and see if the Taxi options return.
The available taxi options in the ATC menu depend on two factors mainly:
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If airport has parking spots configured in custom groups you can see additional things like “taxi to north parking” or “taxi to east parking”. This is happening at some third party airports which are the ones that typically may use those groups as those custom options are defined at scenery editor.
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There´s a free parking spot already available and suitable for your aircraft size and type (e.g: non military type parking for the case of an airliner)
If a parking position is to be released shortly by an AI, default ATC won´t still allow you taxi there. This is a problem with current game implementation as it leads to AI also being stuck after landing, even in the middle of the runway, as there are no taxi options for them either.
So basically your issue is happening because all suitable parking spots for your aircraft are already occupied by AI or are even not existing at that airport. The solution until game engine better handles ground traffic, and provided that the suitable parkings indeed exist, is to lower a bit AI traffic density and/or parked AI density to avoid too crowded airports.
Cheers
I set my AI Traffic to Real Time and during several flights (have actually flown around the world twice) with the A320, I’m always assigned a Gate. Recently, flying the 787 it’s been almost every time where ATC ground acts like an uncontrolled airport. If the gates are full, as has been my experience, it should guide the plane to General Aviation Parking. I’ll run a few flights and see if it persists. Anyone else see this?
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Yes but for the 787 it happens what I explained before: parking shall be still suitable for plane size, which is “heavy” in that case as 787 is bigger than 320. General aviation spots are most of time rated as “medium” or even “small” size in many game airports. In most cases you can only park 787 and 747 at some gates (not all are even big enough for the heavies) or some cargo docks.
You can check the parking sizes while at world map selecting them when creating the flight or in real time using Littlenavmap app for instance. The later is better as you will see the parked AI as well.
Cheers
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I have had different experiences taxing to parking or to a gate at large airports that should have gates available. Each landing seems to have different random taxi menus:
- “Normal” menu having options for taxi to gate or to parking.
- Menu showing only taxi to parking. Selecting this directs me either to a parking spot or sometimes to a gate.
- Menu showing no options for either parking or gate.
If there are no options to taxi to a gate, I will taxi towards the terminal and try to find a gate with ground crew. After parking at the gate, ground services (fuel, jetway, baggage, catering) are available.
I haven’t found an instance that I can reproduce. It seems like at some airports the taxi menu is dependent on the runway exit. Exiting at the end of a runway seems to eliminate gate or parking taxi options.
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Agreed, this has been my experience. Sometimes ATC menu gives me the option to taxi to a gate. Other times, only to parking. Other times, nothing at all. I couldn’t find any pattern on this as on the same airport I’ve had pretty much all the experiences (Heathrow or Gatwick for example).
One or two things I’ve noticed:
- There are some airplanes with which it happens more often (the BAe 146 and ATR42/72 come to my mind). This isn’t exactly related to not having an appropiate gate available for the aircraft since it has sent me several times to gates for big aircraft (and when requesting jetway connection it was denied, correctly since the commercial gateway can’t connect to the ATR for example).
- There are some occasions where as soon as I leave the runway, it automatically marks the path to a gate or to a parking spot.
- It happens both in custom and default airports.
ATC can route you to a bigger parking if available but not to a smaller one than your size or one not matching your type (e.g: military). If you find issues with a particular airport/aircraft you can do a quick check after landing before starting taxi: disable AI traffic completely, press “Y” to go into slew mode moving aircraft a bit so that it becomes airborne, then move it back to runway and finally disable slew mode by pressing “Y” again. That will trigger a new landing event and therefore the ATC ground options too. As there´s no AI at that moment all parking positions should be available for you alone. If menu options are available then this means empty parkings were already booked for some of the incomming AI when AI traffic was enabled and that´s the reason why you had no way to perform taxi.
As I said this is a limitation in current ground handling method. ATC is very basic and either it follows flight plans with pre-assigned parking positions (booking parkings in advance before landing) or follows the “first in, first out” approach in case flight plan does not define any parking positions (booking one of the avialable ones after landing). As far as I have seen it´s not able to resolve conflicts nor queue traffic on ground until a parking position is available. If no parking is available it just stops AI where it is and this becomes a dead end which is only resolved by reseting AI traffic via options menu. Indeed it does not even resolve taxi conflicts either as sometimes you find planes facing each other at taxiways intersections leading to another dead end, so imagine something a bit more complex like real-time ground handling 
Cheers
I’ve reduced AI Traffic to 25%. Plenty of gates available at any airport. In this case, arriving in CYVR with the 787, ATC (Ground) provided the uncontrolled airport menu.
The taxi ribbon appeared before exiting the rwy and did lead me to a gate (missing building / jetway is another issue) so Ground should have been able to assign a gate after landing.
This happens on both the 787 and 747 - A320 is ok.
Ok, so I tried assigning a gate in the MSFS flight planner with some interesting results. Worked ok, but I got 2 taxi ribbons and 2 sets of instructions for Gate and General Aviation Parking. Will keep flying and see what happens.