"Dan" wrote in message
...

That's one way to look at it. However fortunately in this case the
weather was clear and there were probably minimal safety issues. If
pilots give ATC some slack when needed, hopefully they'll be nice when
the pilots mess up. He did eventually get the clearance straightened
out. Nobody's perfect, and as long as we all realize and learn from
mistakes, I don't see why there's a need to be anal about it.

It's a two-way street.


Why does ATC need some slack in this case? Ground control knew he was IFR,
that controller issued an IFR clearance and taxi instructions to the OP.
Presumably the ground controller passes a flight strip to the local
controller on all departures that shows the aircraft to be IFR or VFR. This
is about as basic as it gets in ATC, there's no excuse for this error and
certainly no excuse for compounding it by asking the OP to squawk VFR after
departure.