I don’t know about others, but for me it soon becomes tedious to call ATC to ‘request pushback’, and then call them again to ‘request push to left’, and then again to ‘stop pushback’, with ATC replying every time that the message has been passed to the engineer.
And all this when he’s right there through the windscreen!
The extra commands in the ATC menu are absolutely fine, but I don’t believe they all need to be voiced and replied to every time, do they? It would be more appropriate to receive a reply on first request, then use left and right key binding to ‘signal’ him to turn the aircraft; and then simply see him wave when we select the ‘stop pushback’ option.
Didn’t one of the Alphas have the ability for steering a pushback via the rudder/brakes? I recall doing it. Or it may have been plane dependent, not sure. But yes, the constant call to left/right is too time consuming and unnecessary.