For long-haul airplanes like the Boeing 777, the Boeing 747, the Airbus A350 and especially the giant Airbus A380, a single jetway bridge to board or deboard all the hundreds of passengers just doesn’t work. Even using a jetway on L1 and a stairwell on the back door may take way too long on big jets. At some airports, you will find double or even triple jetways on some heavy gates, exactly because… you know… “time is money”! The less time you take to load or unload passengers on a plane, the smaller the turnaround, the fewer delays will occur and the happier the passengers will be.
Because of a Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020 and 2024) limitation, for some time it was only possible to load passengers via one single jetway, even if the scenery had two or three modelled on its gates. Software that intended to depict ground operations was limited to what the simulation allowed, so programs like GSX Pro by FS Dreamteam were never able to animate the jetways or even depict passengers loading via two or more bridges. In the recent past, FSDT did mention they were working on native multi-jetways simulation for GSX in MSFS, but that work is still underway and was kept quiet until recently.
Perhaps not willing to wait any further, iniBuilds took it upon themselves to go around this issue by creating their own multi-jetway solution. At some select airports that would be (slowly) updated to accommodate this new feature, like Chicago O’Hare, Hong Kong or Heathrow, you can install a “multi-jetway tool” created by the company, that will enable and animate these dual or triple jetways. Of course, these are only available on their sceneries, and seem to be part of the custom scenery tech, apparently not recognized by MSFS itself as an active passenger entry point. So you know this would lead to further issues with third parties.
Indeed, GSX didn’t even “see” the bridges when operating ground handling for the aircraft, telling its users there were “no jetways available”, and they would need to load passengers onto the very slow and phased bus via the rear stairs. Users, of course, complained about this, both to iniBuilds and to FSDT, getting some obvious replies. On one hand, iniBuilds suggested the complaints should be towards the GSX maker, while FSDT explained they had their own system in the works and a compromise needed to be found. And here it is.
Yesterday, GSX Pro for MSFS was updated by FSDT to version 4.0.22. Among other fixes in a rather small changelog (compared to previous updates, where the changelogs would be page-turners), FSDT finally made the iniBuilds multi-jetways compatible with GSX with this entry:
GSX (all versions) NEW: New gate profile option externaljetways = 1 for stands whose jetways are driven by third-party tech GSX cannot detect (such as iniBuilds KORD): boarding and deboarding run simulated at the jetway, without visible passengers, instead of falling back to stairs and bus.
That’s it. After this adjustment, the iniBuilds multi-jetways on their sceneries will become “visible” to GSX. But there are some limitations. You will have boarding and deboarding simulated in time and quantity for the airplanes, but you will not see the passengers’ 3D models inside the jet bridges. That’s not really, really important but it does remove some of the immersion. But, at least, we don’t have to board passengers through the slow rear entrance only.
This is all very convenient timing, as you may know. Of course, FSDT will continue to work on their own solution for multi-jetways, especially important because there are many more airports not developed by iniBuilds that need this feature. However, the community’s complaints and pressure for a “compromise” on GSX were quite opportune for another reason. The A380 Airliner is coming next week, and you can only imagine what it would be like to load 545 passengers (or 853 in the maximum certified capacity) using just one rear staircase. Nuts…
The FS Dreamteam GSX Pro update to version 4.0.22 is available now via the FSDT Installer. The iniBuilds Multi-jetway tool is also available now in the iniManager as an option for their selected airports (KORD, VHHH, EGLL, EGKK, OMDB V2 and more to come).
