post 2

On Tuesday I helped find a glitch in the simulation program in which a plane will taxi to the runway backwards and take off going the wrong way. When a plane is at the terminal, it must push back from the terminal before it can taxi to the runway. There is a command that can be given to a plane called "follow" which tells the pilot to follow another plane to the runway. If the following plane is pushed back from the terminal and is told to follow a plane in front of it, it will turn around 180 degrees and then taxi to the runway backwards behind the plane that it is following. If there is another plane in the way, the following plane will drag it along to the runway rather than going around it or stopping. When the backward planes are clear for take off, they take off from the the end of one of the taxi ways rather than on the runway, and they go in the opposite direction from where they are supposed to. The planes then lift off immediately without taking any time to get up to speed. This issue does not occur when the planes are told to follow without being pushed back, but it is unrealistic for a plane to start taxiing without being pushed back. The problem was recorded and was sent to programmers for them to take a look at it.