Never Heard this Before

AKBill

En-Route
Joined
Nov 29, 2014
Messages
3,735
Location
Juneau, AK
Display Name

Display name:
AKBill
3 mile final for rwy 08 Juneau. Tower tells AK AL hold short. I flair and land, on my roll out AK 337 tells tower they are cleared to DA, DADA, DADA, IFR clearance. Well by then I'm off at Charlie intersection waiting past the hold short line for instructions. As soon as AK AL stops talking tower says 60R contact ground.

I must say I have never heard an aircraft tell the tower we are cleared to..... I've always heard ground give the IFR traffic their clearance. Is this normal???
 
Could’ve been a last minute reroute prior to departure.
 
They probably were reading back on tower when they should have been reading back on a different frequency. Maybe. Or something entirely different.
 
Had the same scenario there a bunch. Get clearance, push back on ground, taxiing to runway get a new clearance via ground freq, told to contact tower. Redback amended clearance on tower freq. Seems like we were handled by the same voice on different freqs usually. Ozcomz Razer and all that.
 
That's my opinion as well.
Agreed, I just thought it was not the proper way to communicate. Heck they could have talked to ground, there were at least two folks working. Ground and tower.
edit: I guess they thought they were on ground, mistakes happen
 
Last edited:
Agreed, I just thought it was not the proper way to communicate. Heck they could have talked to ground, there were at least two folks working. Ground and tower.
edit: I guess they thought they were on ground, mistakes happen

Yup. Sometimes Approach or Center gets to listen all about how they are beginning their descent, buckle up and what the weather is like at destination. And then sometimes they think they are just talking to each other, like this
 
@ericstoltz covered it. Apparently it's a thing there to be given a clearance on one freq, then told to read it back to tower.
. I have heard tower on ground and tower at the same time when only one controller was working. Ground and tower were both manned. Never heard pilot read back clearance on tower frequency
 
. I have heard tower on ground and tower at the same time when only one controller was working. Ground and tower were both manned. Never heard pilot read back clearance on tower frequency

All kinds of scenarios can happen at those usually slow Towers. One guy is working it all, tells someone who just landed to taxi to parking, remain this frequency. Then after lunch the plane calls for taxi but by then they’ve opened Ground up. Tower may put him back on Ground for taxi or just taxi him and tell Ground what he’s doing. Lotsa places say taxi to parking, monitor Ground frequency. Some controllers, when it’s combined, want everyone on the same frequency so planes are less likely to be stepping on each other, some like the having them on the freq that matches what they are doing. I dunno how this all relates to the Alaska readback thing. How long had you been on frequency? Maybe Alaska got his clearance, said we’ll get back to you on the readback and it took them awhile to figure out if they were going to accept that clearance.
 
I have often heard "all tower services on..." when things were not busy. That meant CD, Ground, and Tower. Common at quiet times even at otherwise busy Class Ds.

The key to all this is that Local (which we cal "tower"), Ground, CD and ATIS are just division of labor at a towered airport. If they don't need them all, they might not use them all. If the TRACON is directly associated with the airport, it might even include them. I was once cleared to land by an Approach controller.

My favorite though, was departing from a Class C primary after a fly-in meeting one night. The airport was usually dead quiet at that time and there was one controller handling CD, Ground, Tower and Approach/departure. Unfortunately, he didn't have the foresight to combine services on one frequency. Drove him crazy when about a dozen of us were all calling for departure instructions, taxi instructions, and takeoff clearances at about the same time.
 
I have often heard "all tower services on..." when things were not busy. That meant CD, Ground, and Tower. Common at quiet times even at otherwise busy Class Ds.

The key to all this is that Local (which we cal "tower"), Ground, CD and ATIS are just division of labor at a towered airport. If they don't need them all, they might not use them all. If the TRACON is directly associated with the airport, it might even include them. I was once cleared to land by an Approach controller.

My favorite though, was departing from a Class C primary after a fly-in meeting one night. The airport was usually dead quiet at that time and there was one controller handling CD, Ground, Tower and Approach/departure. Unfortunately, he didn't have the foresight to combine services on one frequency. Drove him crazy when about a dozen of us were all calling for departure instructions, taxi instructions, and takeoff clearances at about the same time.

C’mon now, fess up, you guys orchestrated this. How evil were you, did you synchronize watches to blast him from all sides at once?:):D;)
 
Back
Top