Hopefully some of the community will find this of interest. Details are, of course, up to debate and agreement.
I would like to see a system of classifying parking stands at airports and a corresponding box on the ATC screen when setting up a flight allowing the player to classify.
This would give scenery makers the ability to control determine which stands are used for which type of aircraft and flights. The player would know that at the destination airport their plane would be routed to the appropriate stand by ATC.
Ideally there should be a way for players to do the stand classification within the sim as well, to allow us to tweak the airports we fly not. This might be of particular significance for auto generated airports. Perhaps the data can be synced to the player’s Xbox account or be savable/exportable to a file, so months and months of tweaking airport stands is not lost when one switches computers.
Stand categories should be on a multiple choice basis from the following categories:
[List is up for debate and agreement]
- General Aviation
- Business Aviation
- Cargo
- Commercial Remote Stand
- Commercial Gate Stand
- Military
- [some form of other category]
Internally the sim could well maintain its small, medium and large classifications for each of those categories to match up to the aircraft flown.
The rationale for this is, hopefully, simple.
Flying to Cologne airport (EDDK), which is where I spent many fine hours plane spotting as a kid growing up in that part of the world, I noticed that many stands are misclassified. Most of my GA flights (CJ4/C208/TBM) are routed to parking in what in real life is the restricted military part of the airport. I even had a A320 flight to EDDK routed to parking there. Equally a CJ4 flight I did was routed to park in what is the the cargo facility, where GA traffic would be very unlikely to park.
With its large freight hubs for UPS and FedEx, this would give me some assurance that where I fly as a cargo plane and selected the option for that on the ATC page when setting up my flight, I will get my A320/B747 etc. routed to one of the cargo parking stands as opposed to ending up at a gate stand by the terminal.
Airports like EDDK with dedicated military areas only see fighter planes (to come to the sim in the future given recent announcements) but also can have cargo planes, Airbuses and Boeing converted to medical planes or even government planes park in their stands.
I split GA into GA and Business. While on many airports GA stands would accommodate both types of flights, there are some airports with dedicated Business Aviation Terminals (might have been a growing trend up till COVID-19 hit).
To use a figurative example: Wayne Enterprises, where available, would probably fly from the Business Aviation area of the airport than from the Joe Public GA area of the airport. On some airports that may well be the difference between parking stands on grass and parking stands on tarmac too.
Airliners I split in remote and gate stand, which often, but not always, would serve as the difference between budget airlines and full service airlines (at least from my own experience in Europe. Can’t comment on other areas of the world with the same degree of certainty).
Whatever one’s own distinction in the sim were to be (budget, regional), it would give the player the ability to avoid being routed to a gate (or vice versa, avoid being routed to a remote stand).
Finally I added some kind of “other” category which probably needs to be fleshed out a bit and may even be redundant from the outset.
My idea here was where we may simulate certain flights which don’t meet the above categories. While Air Force One might use the a military stand, it might also not always do so or fly to a destination which doesn’t facilitate a military area. Think of it a bit as GA for large aircraft 
Likewise, Bruce Wayne’s personal Boeing 747 would probably not park up at the terminal gate.
I am not sure myself what to call this category or if it’s needed. I kind of think it might be good to have, maybe just as a sort of [Uncategorised flight] category for none of the above options.
Up for debate.
