[LINK] Flying through clouds

[Scott Howard]

On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 11:21 PM, <stephen at melbpc.org.au> wrote:

> For example the last O/S flight I took, via an major national carrier
> a few months ago, all of we passengers had to rapidly move quite some
> distance to another departure gate. Speaking with ground staff, as to
> why, they said that the pilots of the carrier regularly pull into the
> nearest available gate and not to the gate allocated to that aircraft.
> With this sort of human system-compliance one predicts major problems
> for you and all involved in this very complicated world flight system.
>

Whoever told you this is either having you on, or is clueless.  Any pilot
that did this more than once would be very quickly looking for a new job.

The one primary thing that keeps our skies (including airports) as safe as
they are is that pilots must follow the instructions they are given, with
very few exceptions (basically all of which are related to when something
goes wrong).  Ignoring company, airport and/or ATC instructions, even for
something as simple as which gate to use, would be a major issue that the
crew would need to answer to.

Gate changes definitely occur, but they occur for operational reasons, not
because a pilot pick the wrong gate to pull into.

  Scott