Why do pilots say.......(uncontrolled)

Fearless Tower said:
Reporting clear of the runway is most helpful for traffic waiting to takeoff where they may not be able to see for certain if you are still on the runway due to airport layout.
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CharlieTango said:
At home I usually depart 09 and quite often someone is on approach to land 27. If they don't report clear of the runway I can't see them due to the midfield hump.
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Good points.

Hence my use of the word "rarely" - not "never" - regarding calling clear of the runway.

Kind of like, "The exception proves the rule".

Nearby Blairsville, GA is one of those exceptions, with a "hump" in the middle. If I see someone waiting in the runup area, I will make the call.

So, in cases like that I would make the call. It's just not my habit to make it as a matter of course.
 
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Topper said:
Ok, so we both agree that saying the runway # is better, but saying clear of the active most assuredly tells everyone you are no longer on the runway.
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But which runway? What if there's more than one? Are you clear of them all, or might you be crossing another? It's just lazy and pointless not to use the actual runway number.
 
FastEddieB said:
...Anyway, I rarely call "Clear of runway xx" at non-towered airports, and I don't really seem to be depriving other arriving aircraft of any critical information.

Thoughts?
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Home airport runway is 9,550 feet (non-towered, one runway). Someone rolling out to the end is kinda hard to see. A call of "clear of 28" is helpful. :D

Mike
 
jesse said:
I agree it works in cases of single runways but it's most certainly not better. The runway number tells more and helps confirm that you're at the airport I think you're at. A checksum, in a way, albeit a weak one, but certainly a better one than active.
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The 1996 Quincy,IL commuter crash is a good illustration why being concise in communications at a non-towered field is a good idea.
 
weilke said:
The 1996 Quincy,IL commuter crash is a good illustration why being concise in communications at a non-towered field is a good idea.
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You mean this accident?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Express_Flight_5925

As best I can tell, among the many things that might have changed the outcome, one would have been for the pilot of the Cherokee to not transmit when another aircraft was being asked his intentions, another would have been for the King Air pilot to have been properly monitoring and responding to the CTAF.

"X traffic, Y clear of [the] active[, X]" and "X traffic, Y clear of R[, X]" are so close in time consumption that the difference is never going to be causal to anything.
 
For those who care, I am a very new student pilot, and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.. But,

As someone who is still trying to pick out and understand what is being said on the CTAF (and there is a lot of chatter on ours from about a dozen local fields)... It is nice to here the runways number as one more element of a transmission to help me determine which airport someone is talking about. On the weekend it is rare I can hear an entire transmission with all the crosstalk.

Not to mention the numbers of pilots who don't end their transmission with the airport name.

As for being clear of the runway, my home drone is so small we have to back taxi to either end, so announcing we are clear is rather important.
 
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Jim Logajan said:
I don't think I'll ever be over Macho Grande.
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I've actually been over Macho Grande, but it was a long time ago. :D

BTW, I never use the term "active"... My home airport has three runways, all of which are served by one main taxiway where they all meet close to the middle intersection, so I just use "clear of all runways" once I've reached the taxiway after landing. When taking off I just say "Taking off from runway ##".
 
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