Clearance on hold, hold for release

On Jun 25, 11:37*am, Mike Adams wrote:
"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote:

will alibrandi wrote:

When you're on tower freq & ready to go at the hold short line,
that's when you'll hear "Hold for release" as that's when the local
controller gets on the land line to the approach facility to activate
your IFR flight plan and get a release.

That's a lousy procedure. *Why wait until the aircraft is ready to
takeoff to call for the IFR release? *Call for it when the aircraft
begins taxiing and the aircraft can be cleared for takeoff when it's
ready to go.

The former is the procedure at my airport (Class D under a Class B).
After taxi and run-up, you contact tower with "ready for departure" and
they then give you "hold for release" and contact the nearby Tracon to
coordinate. Depending on the traffic at nearby airports the delay can be
signficant.

I've never heard "hold for release" from clearance delivery or ground. I
agree that this sounds like a bad procedure, and unclear on the meaning.
Maybe the (new) controller just wanted to make it clear that his
clearance did not include a release or clearance for takeoff, but that
should have been obvious it seems to me.

Mike

I don't know for sure but that might be right out of the 7110. Having
spent lots of time in the tower when I worked in airport ops, I've
seen this happen many times. The controller calls approach on the land
line to activate the flight plan once you get your clearance. Once you
taxi out & you're waiting at the hold short line (and tell the tower
you're ready) the controller then calls approach again for the
release. It's usually done within 30 seconds of a pilot's calling
ready, but then again I worked at a small Class D airport so a busy
field would probably take longer.