[gatorbuc99]

Lol, thanks. Well in all fairness, it's the airlines who handcuff you and us alike. They need to do a more consistent job of keeping track of their arrivals and if they have a gate available when they land; they need to keep ya'll advised BEFORE, like you say, they get to the ramp. We're usually more than happy to take them onto the ramp unless the sh*ts hitting the fan, and that is only because it clogs things up and we already have limited room to keep traffic moving, while you guys have miles of taxiway :-P

As far as blocking the ramp, i'm going to get on the soap box here for a second. We don't consider it blocked up unless aircraft are outbound in both lanes, i think most of ya'll don't either but some do. We push out Airtran and ASA guys the wrong way routinely, if there's a lengthy outbound line, so they can double back to get in line and we're still able to take in arrivals. Ramps 1 and 2, the Delta guys can't do that (dumb rule), so i'd like to think we're not as bad as them, lol.

Every now and then, you do mess up and block up both lanes or the pilots don't listen (imagine that, huh?)...but we don't have radar or anything, half the time we have no idea what's headed our way inbound, so we just kinda go with what we have visually. The airlines are in our ears to get their planes pushed out to trip the acars and get that oh-so-important on-time departure, so we push 'em out and go from there, even if their gates are at the very end.

What's frustrationg sometimes is, like you say, we have four or five straight inbound an we take 'em all in without flinching while it's take 10 mins sometimes for 4 or 5 outbounds to leave the ramp...(although in all fairness, most of our guys don't realize ya'll have to worry about sequencing, flights plans that have timed out, re-routes, intrail restrictions, flow/delay programs, groundstops, etc.) we can't help it if airplanes don't have rampers to pull them in, towbars being broken, passengers getting up, etc. Anyway, i'm off now...:-D

Yea her name's Heather, i went to school with her. Trust me, we'll eat her up when she starts on the radio in a few weeks or months more than likely, lol. She'll have quite a learning curve, let me put it that way ;-)