Controller screwed up?

(Paul Tomblin) wrote in news:fc4fe3$1ab$1
@xen1.xcski.com:

I was coming in to land on RWY 4 at ROC. There was a North West MD80 at
the hold short line. Almost as soon as my mains touched down, before I'd
slowed down, the tower controller cleared the North West flight to take
off. I came back with "977 is still on the runway on runway 4", with a
rather urgent tone of voice because I didn't want to become the next
Tenerife. The controller, instead of cancelling the take off clearance
for the North West flight like I expected, came back with my taxi
instructions.

I'm hoping the North West flight saw me or heard me, but it seems to me
that it was wrong for the controller to rely on that. I'm going to file
a NASA form, but is there anything else I should do?

Hi Paul,
It's a pretty common practice at the larger airports.

There are a few realities he

1) The takeoff clearance is just that - a clearance. The pilot is still
responsible for safety of flight. ie: Just because you're cleared into
class B airspace doesn't mean you can fly into traffic in the air either.
Certainly, while the MD-80 was sitting #1 waiting to take off, he heard
tower clearing you to land, and saw you land and watched as you turned off
the runway.

2) As others have pointed out, you certainly had enough of a head start on
him that unless you had some sort of engine failure you would be clear of
the runway long before he caught up to you.

That said, in that situation, if you were to have some sort of problem and
couldn't clear the runway in a responsible amount of time, I would
immediately let Tower know.