Isn’t taxiing supposed to be one of the “easy parts” of being a pilot? At first glance, it might appear that taxiing an aircraft is much, much easier than flying it. A non-pilot might think, “There are really easy-to-read signs, just like on streets, right? You turn left, turn right, stop. Just like a car, right? Otherwise taxiing an airplane would be totally dangerous and difficult, right?”
Turns out, yeah, there are signs, and turns and stopping are all part of the skills. But a few things are overlooked in this analysis. For one, the machine we’re steering on the ground likely has only three small wheels, two smaller brakes, merely uses one wheel to steer and there’s no reverse. There’s a very specific route you have to follow, and there are lots of similarly ill-handling machines nearby trying to do the same thing. The icing on the cake, of course, is ATC.
