"Julian Scarfe" wrote in message
...
Not sure why there's such a strong aversion to this.


"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...

Well, for one, because nearly all fatal collisions between transport
aircraft occurred on a runway.

That's fair enough. I think there have been at least two landing vs
position-and-hold collisions, though I don't think either of them involved
waiting for an IFR clearance -- but I take the point.

[...] Hence it's not unusual at a quiet controlled airport to be given
the
IFR clearance while lined up on the runway, and a take-off clearance
immediately afterwards.

I don't think anyone stipulated the "quiet controlled airport".
"Controlled" is implied, of course. But this "quiet" was never stated.
In
the US, "quiet controlled airport" is either an oxymoron by definition, or
a
relative term applicable to airports where there's still a fair amount of
traffic.

Well Tenerife was pretty quiet that day until the collision!

It's difficult to tell as I have limited experience of flying in the US, but
it didn't seem unusual for minutes to go by without the runway being in use.
My last flight in the US involved an unscheduled stop at PAE after a door
came open in flight. We landed on the runway and instead of asking us to
vacate we got to stop, fix the door and then backtrack on the runway to the
end. Does Paine Field count as quiet?

If the clearance were given at the hold, it could
take minutes to backtrack the runway and get airborne -- it's not
unusual
to get such a clearance a couple of minutes before the end of a flow
management slot.

Minutes? I've never seen an airport where an airplane would take more
than
ten or fifteen seconds to get lined up and take off. Not saying they
don't
exist, of course, but surely it makes more sense to think about the
typical
case here when talking about general procedures.

Again I can only think of specific cases -- I guess concrete is cheaper in
the US. :-) At my home base of Cambridge in the UK, the last paved taxiway
to/from the apron is about 2/3 of the way down the 6500 ft runway 05. Thus
the 747s that come in for maintenance end up taxying more than 4000 ft on
the runway, and they don't like doing that very quickly. It's more common
than not for them (and the rest of us for that matter) to get a clearance
while backtracking.

Julian Scarfe