4 ms·

I am not an expert This doesn’t seem to make any sense to me. If taxiing is so inefficient, why not use the pushback carts to push/pull the planes into positio

I am not an expert This doesn’t seem to make any sense to me. If taxiing is so inefficient, why not use the pushback carts to push/pull the planes into position? I’ve been to many more airports that make the plane taxi for quite a distance, like 20 minutes (not just sitting and waiting, but moving) to get to the gate than ones that “ensure you have shorter distance and can reuse kinetic energy from landing”

p_l 4y ago
That's essentially what the prototype projects are doing, except optimized for taxiing vs. "just" pushback or maintenance moves - normal pushback truck is not exactly prepared to handle high traffic taxiing, partially due to how communication between aircraft and pushback is handled. So those projects investigate a solution that is optimized for the whole taxi trip at full traffic at the airport, including electric solutions to avoid currently heavy diesel pushback trucks.