Jim Carter wrote:

Maybe I'm confused too, but I thought we always told Ground Control that we
were ready to taxi IFR or VFR, especially if we picked up our clearance from
some other controller. Is this no longer the norm?


You really have to see how a busy VFR tower works from the inside to see
how it's easy to lose an aircraft. At GFK every morning we'd have 25
aircraft on the taxiway, all ready to depart and more taxiing out. That
was the easy part, no arrivals. Now have the same number ready to go
but you have six airplanes doing touch and goes on your runway and six
more the other tower controller is working on his runway. Aircraft 3
miles away needing to be sequenced into one of the patterns. Aircraft
still on the ground you pay little attention to as that's only a small fire.