IMPORTANT: the topic was modified to reflect thoughts and insights gained through communication with the community. Start here from the beginning:
I took a flight recently from Wangerooge to mainland and saw a gas pump on the stand at the airport. Having those would most likely make operations more easily.
Consider the stand having an AVGas/Jetfuel tank with let us say 2500 or 5000 litres capacity. The fuel truck will fill this internal tank and come to refill, when 10% or lower content. When a small GA or commercial plane lands either the pilot or the ramp agents will service the fuel needs of the plane without the need of calling a vehicle reducing response time for your fuel tankers and reducing vehicle traffic on your airport which might have a positive impact on game performance. The logic circuit for ordering fuel is already implemented into the fuel depots so I can imagine something like this could work.
I thought of it like my made proposal, because the mechanism (having a tank ordering fuel) already exists in the code. The devs could use stuff from the fuel depot directly to make this true rather quickly. And, I strongly believe, there was a tank underneath the stand. I do not think, airports would do a pipeline system because of costs and environmental issues.
P.S.: a pipeline system would be too expensive to buy at the early stages of the game while a simple underground tank with gas pump is quite affordable.
True and I can totally imagine this on a large metropolitan airport with lots of large planes arriving and departing. But not on a regional airfield with some small stands. But the latter was my suggestion about. But Iike where this could lead to.
For large airports it’s definitely a piped system. Generally the tanks are placed some distance away from the terminal / populated areas at a Fuel Farm and can be above or below ground. Then pipes run to the stands where it is available via fuel hydrants and pumped to the airplane using a hydrant cart.
I know, but this was about small stands for small airports. Make it upgradeable to pipelines later to save the fuel trucks would be an option to go. But when buying a fuel truck is the first step, then stand-deployed tanks is step 2 and pipelines the third and final step.
Unfortunately, it is not easily recognizable in the photos, but it is like a petrol station with petrol pumps, to which the aircraft roll up and the pilots refuel their planes as we refuel our cars.
I thought about just this. It is very small to see, but can you recognize the small gas station between the 3 planes? Just such a thing. I saw it from the plane after landing. 2 small petrol fuel pumps possibly for Jetfuel A! and AVGas 100LL. This was just the thing that made me write this suggestion.
I like the idea of an small gas station upgrade for small stands which gets refilled by a fuel truck. As all current fuel trucks are oversized for current GA flights it would save a fleet of trucks.
I like the separate gas station, similar to a de-icing pad, even more. Honestly a gas station for each small stand wouldn’t be that realistic. It still can be refilled by fuel trucks or by pipeline once they get into the game.
I like this thought even more than my original thought of equipping a small stand with a fuel pump. When de-icing pads are implemented, such a thing could be feasible as well - a fuel station for GA planes, maybe serviced by one ramp agent. Just giving GA a bit more love. This is what a good community can do: an idea passes hither to yonder and something good emerges
I renamed the topic to reflect my actual thoughts on the matter. Refueling GA flights could in a certain way work like de-icing at a dedicated gas station.
Summary:
have GA refuel at dedicated gas station that is accessible like a de-icing pad
can be refueled by any AVGas100LL and JetFuel A1 trucks for the according type of fuel
holds 5.000 liters of each fuel
GA flight (and MAYBE commercial small ones like Cessna-types) is either refueled by GA pilots (so we might see them finally) or by 1 ramp agent getting there via service car (worse solution as it could cause high traffic). I guess, self-service is best.