Confusion

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?

--
Jim Carter
Rogers, Arkansas
....

Guess I'll remember to remind Tower that I'm IFR from now on, although I
didn't think that was necessary. At least in this case, it was.

Jon

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.

"Newps" wrote
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.

I can't imagine how anyone can be a controller. I can barely keep track of
where one plane (me) is. Kudos to all of you!

Jon

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?

Nope, not at Dulles. The guy who gave me my clearance has dropped the
strip down the rack by the appropriate ground controller. The call
is usually "Dulles Ground Navion 5327K TAXI". They already know where
I am and obviously where I need to go.