Over the months I have seen many people talking about which way to turn during the push back sequence, along with all sorts of suggestions in the push back menu to help with whether to go Left or Right. I did an update today, which has prompted me to write this Post. I noticed in the Push Back menu that we now have Right (tail right nose left) and Left (tail left nose right). All quite straight forward, but this does not actually tell us which way I need to turn! Let me say straight away, that I am not expecting GSX to tell me this; that would be unreasonable, so let me explain how I am deciding which way to turn.
Lets first of all assume you are flying one of the heavies. I fly the default 737-800 as I have my own homebuilt cockpit, but I see no reason why the following would not apply to other default heavies or third party aircraft.
One thing I have noticed at most airports is that the Gate I start from is very often (about 80% of the time) at right angles to the runway. (I will assume there is just the one runway in the following example) So let us suppose that at start up my Plane is facing the Gate at 360'; and the runway behind me runs East - West/ West - East. So we have two possible take off Runways; Rwy 09 or Rwy 27. If you think about it, this is an inverted T.
Now before even pressing the Tab 'Fly Now' I would have decided where I am flying from, and where to, and have done an IFR Flight Plan, along with all my other settings, i.e. weather, fuel, time of day etc etc. I am probably familiar with the Airport I am heading off to, so suppose I want to land on Runway 08 at that given Airport, so I set my Wind under the weather tab for a Head Wind around 08 or similar if I want a cross wind landing.
It now stands to reason that when I listen to ATIS at my departure Airport, it is going to inform me that runway 09 is being used for all take offs and landings. I am sure most reading this will know we always take off and land into wind. (lower ground speed, for any given Indicated Air Speed IAS - Head Wind Componant)
So, now sitting back at the Gate I need to program up my FMC with my Flight Plan. Once this is done a solid Magenta line will show on the Pilots and Co-Pilots instrumentation; showing the flight route. Now, I already know from ATIS that Runway 09 is in use, so I set my Heading Select on my MCP (Autro Pilot Unit) to 090. This can be finely tuned once actually on the Runway; it could be something like 088 or 092, but for now 090 will do just fine. Now looking at your instrumentation, you will see that your Plane is pointing to 360', but you have a dotted Magenta line pointing to your right 090'. Now that as you know is your take off direction, so it stands to reason that you need to taxi in the Opposite direction i.e. 270' to reach your take off point.
So, in short once you have set you Heading Select, that is the direction you want the TAIL of your Aircraft to take for the purpose of the push back sequence. Magenta line right / tail right. Obviously this would be Magenta line left / Tail Left if you were taking off from Runway 27.
Sometimes at larger Airports this is not quite so clear, and I use a Follow Me car to help. I believe GSX will introduce a Follow me Car to taxi out as well as in in due course.
Failing all of the above you could just press the key that activates the yellow arrows, and follow those, but not such a good idea!
I have now thoroughly confussed myself, but I hope the above may be of help to anyone having trouble knowing which way to turn in the push back sequence!
