Clearing the Ramps

[Christian Page, RAI]

For an experiment, I am going to go in and modify a few flight plans to take some aircraft out of gate space and run them to maintenance bases at night. I noticed Braniff jams up DFW and their planes start moving to other terminals - and I do have the full 20 gates at 2W that existed in 1975. I'll take a few that overnight and send them to Love Field to stay, coming back to DFW in the morning. Since American has also been popular as of late, I think I will try the same with them - sending them to the Tulsa base to park for the night. I really remember sitting on my balcony in Tulsa and watching all the AA traffic roll into the M&E Center every night, since it was often birds we didn't see in regular service there - thought it might be nice to simulate that.

[tgibson]

Hi Kris,

Wouldn't it be easier just to add some remote Braniff parking to the DFW AFCAD? Did they have a hangar at DFW?

[Christian Page, RAI]

Apr 10, 2008 11:12:01 GMT -5 tgibson said:

Hi Kris,

Wouldn't it be easier just to add some remote Braniff parking to the DFW AFCAD? Did they have a hangar at DFW?

In later years, yes, but not in 1975. Primary maintenance for the 727s and DC-8s was always at Love. It was only when they acquired a fleet of 747s that they built facilities at DFW since Love was too small for more than one 747, and they had to work on it outside at Love, since the Love base was built in the propliner era. It's more a realism thing,seeing those airports dead at night isn't like how it was. It's not a huge task, only a handful of planes will move - maybe 5 or 6 BN 727s and 1 DC-8. For AA, maybe 1 or 2 of each type. In theory, though, this only works with airlines that have maintenance bases at non-hub airports, like AA, BN, and TW - because you know what happens otherwise, the planes just go back to the same spots they vacated FWIW, I did had some ramp parking for BN at DFW, which isn't accurate for 1975, but definitely for the late '70's - the problem still occurs, albeit a bit lessened. The problem also happened at non-hub airports, as I recall BN always having to push a plane back to a clear area of the ramp so they could bring another in. WN still does this, as does Eagle, but not as much as they did in the last days of the old terminal. And heavens forbid DFW would go on divert, as Will Rogers was the first choice beacuse of its two long runways - when I worked there, there was many a time when the whole ramp was covered with diverted AA and DL jets - once even an LH A340 got diverted, which was the most unusual traffic I ever saw during one of those times. I bet that was the first time the German pilots had ever SEEN Will Rogers, let alone opereated out of there!