Follow-me Cars
Posted by Ok-Dot-3396@reddit | aviation | View on Reddit | 3 comments
Easy question but I was always wondering this, especially flying from Cologne in Germany. Why do some airports, also relatively easy to navigate as Cologne, have a huge amount of follow-me cars and at other airports with more traffic and more complex taxi routing, they do not exist? Is it just a „budget“ question or are there also other reasons?
_Yellow_13@reddit
Jobs program or whatever.
Do you know what.
I like them. It makes the last 5 mins of my day 10X easier.
Yes I’ve briefed charts on where I’m going, sure I’ve called handling and they told me the stand… However sometimes visibility is bad, sometimes we have rubber tire marks over the gate numbers on the floor and it’s a bit of a pain searching.
And some times it’s just nice.
Follow the follow me….It allows me to keep my look out more outside as opposed to checking and adjusting my charts all the time.
FYI, There’s plenty of tired pilots out the who after staring at a screen for 12 hours find it a relief on the way in after multiple sectors or bashing a red eye to just have someone ‘vector’ them on to stand.
Not me FAA I don’t get tired or fatigued.
It’s actually nice after seeing how some places are cutting everything to pay the share holders more.
the_beat_labratory@reddit
It’s a jobs creation program.
I’ve been flying internationally for close to forty years, including MANY trips to CGN. Pretty much everywhere else my company provides a marshaler. In CGN the marshaller is provided by the airport and he starts in a follow me car on the taxiway where he pretends to help us find our parking place. Then he “leads” us through the turn and fucks up my taxi planning by driving too slowly and forcing me to ride the brakes and piss away all my momentum. Then he speeds up so he can drive to the end of the parking spot where he jumps out of his car and starts waving his wands. Then after I stop in my final position he jumps in his vehicle and speeds off while I still have an engine running before signaling that the chocks are in place so I have to find someone else to confirm it.
I’m sure that follow me guy goes home thinking he is the key to the safety of the whole airport, when in a actuality he’s a pain in the butt and it would be better if he was replaced with a simple marshaller like EVERY OTHER RAMP I park on.
Mike__O@reddit
Jobs program