Commercial Fixed Wing
Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Multiengine; Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Troubleshooting; Situational Awareness; Confusion; Communication Breakdown
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural FAR; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Ground Event / Encounter Ground Equipment Issue
General Flight Cancelled / Delayed
Environment - Non Weather Related; Equipment / Tooling
While approaching MCO Gate XXX to park the aircraft; we noticed that the Marshaller had two wands that were flickering on/off.  A wand that is flickering on/off is not a properly working lighted wand.  The Marshaller needed to bang the wands individually to get them to operate.  Neither the left and right Wing Walker's had lighted wands.  I stopped the aircraft; set the parking brake; made a radio call to MCO Operations asking for six lighted wands (two for the Marshaller; two for the left Wing Walker; and two for the right Wing Walker).  We waited about 10 minutes while waiting for the MCO Ramp Supervisors to find six working wands from the surrounding gates.  One of the supervisors saw that the wands being used by the Marshaller were flickering on/off.  One of the Ramp Supervisors took one of the inoperative wands from the Marshaller and discarded it by throwing it across the ramp I spoke to the two Ramp Supervisors; and they explained the following:1. This situation happens all the time in MCO where the safety equipment (lighted wands) do not work properly at night.2. If we go to an adjacent gate to obtain wands; there is a 50/50 chance that we will find lighted wands that work (all the time; not just tonight).3. There is no manager on duty tonight.  All managers left for home earlier in the evening.  The managers do not preflight the equipment to ensure it is working properly and ensure that we have adequate numbers of lighted wands before the managers go home for the night (ongoing issue).  4. We have communicated the problems about the safety equipment not operating properly many times to our managers; and nothing ever happens to fix the problem.5. Other pilots have mentioned the same concern about lack of operating safety equipment to MCO Leadership and still nothing improves.6. One Ramp Supervisor explained that he has worked at four different (Company) Stations.  He said that MCO is by far the least prepared with ramp equipment; safety equipment; etc.  The (Company) VP of Ground Operations needs to ensure that all stations have adequate safety equipment and that it is used consistently when required.  The MCO Station Manager needs to get involved and ensure his/her (Company) Ground Operations Team has an adequate amount of properly working lighted wands every evening before the Ramp and Operations Managers retire for the evening.  The ramp agents need to be trained that the use of the lighted wands is mandatory to ensure the aircraft arriving at night can be safely parked in the safety zone.  No exceptions!
Air Carrier Captain reported inoperative safety equipment used by the ground marshaling crew.