Whenever you load a flight starting from a ramp area, the plane is facing a fence, a wall, a building. It is surrounded on both sides by marshallers, other planes, trucks. Yes, airliners start their flights facing in towards a building, and yes, they get a pushback. But no pilot of a 172, Baron, TBM or anything else smaller than a regional airliner or turboprop freighter ever parks their airplane facing in.
We should be able to load flights facing out. So you can start your engine, and taxi away from your parking position without hitting anything or decapitating anyone.
Hhmm, in all my light aircraft private flying years I never had a tug push me back: had to do it myself while steering with the towbar that every light aircraft always has in the cabin. Maybe I just did not live right…
Yeah, that’s a better solution. But I’m a private pilot and I’ve been around airplanes for 44 years (I’m 45). Pilots of small planes never, ever, ever, ever, ever park nose in. It’s just one of those things. If you have to, you swing it around as best you can while taxiing to your spot and basically leave it 45 degrees facing out. Then you kill the engine, grab the towbar, and push it back into the parking space. But always, always, always facing out. It’s not even that MSFS puts you in inconvenient spots, it puts you nose in dead on to a solid object. It’s just something that you would never really see.
I’ve scattered hundreds of millions of dollars in Cessna debris across the state of California while learning to fly this Longitude beast. But I’m having a blast doing it.
Glad it’s only simulation.
Yeah, I remember when I was trying to get a job at Montgomery Field (San Diego) and I learned about parking the aircraft and turning the prop a certain way to signify if it needed fuel or not. But that was a lifetime ago (1977) and I was too young to get the job for insurance reasons… needed to be 18 to be out on the tarmac. I had already been to ground school, but things changed and my life took another direction. Now I just simulate the life I could have had.
I have to respectfully disagree with the statement that small GA aircraft never park nose-in. In my experience it was fairly common. Like was stated above, that’s why there is a towbar in the cabin. I did the preflight and walkaround and then pushed the airplane back myself before starting the engine.
Aahh yes, remarkable how pushing around a 3,000+ lb. aircraft smartens you right up when it comes to picking your next parking spot! Parking up against an obstacle is typically a “do it once” kind of learning experience. ESPECIALLY on sloping ground!
Unfortunately I do not have many photographs of my flying years but those I do have show a marked absence of fixed objects in front of the parked aircraft.
This is particularly annoying in the Widgeon on Xbox when at a small field.
No ground services and I don’t have a full flight setup with differential braking so I’ve literally had to load into another airfield. Not like IRL where you stand on one brake and the turning radius is literally the distance from the landing gear to the opposite wing tip.
@LadenKitty92253
If you haven’t assigned a keyboard command for differential brakes, why don’t you simply use the slew mode to turn your aircraft around?
We can’t do this in MSFS because the aircraft doors are locked (MSFS stock aircraft) and no one can leave to “grab the tow bar”. Thus the need for pushback.
Understood and agreed that there are circumstances and occasions that it is unavoidable or required. But if I had a choice then I certainly actively avoided having to manhandle the aircraft. And even when parking “backed in”, there often wasn’t enough space so you had to taxi to the parking spot, turn around facing in the desired direction, shut the aircraft down & push it backwards into the desired space.