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Old Nov 2, 2006 | 3:46 am
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Globaliser
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Originally Posted by StevieJ
Is there some sort of guidance system that puts them right on the line or is it just experience etc like driving a car?
Back to the original question. It is not actually that difficult to do this, provided you concentrate on what you're doing.

I say this from experience: With almost no flying experience of any sort, I successfully taxied a 777 to the gate after landing, and parked it pretty accurately first time. The more difficult thing is to accurately identify the system that tells you when to stop so that the jetway can be brought to the aircraft door; gentle application of the 777's very powerful brakes was not easy, so there was a lot of stop-go until we were in exactly the right place.

It so happened that we were safely on the ground at Cranebank throughout when I did all this, but it should be a fairly realistic simulation of the real thing.
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