A group of friends decided to meet at a local airport (OXC) restaurant (121) for lunch on Sunday. It turned out that about 10 airplanes converged on the same airport from every direction within the span of an hour and we all wanted to make the right turn-off to the restaurant instead of the left turn-off to the FBO.
Mine was the first plane to arrive at 11:45 and the controller had 1 plane doing touch & goes in the pattern, 2 departures, and 3 arrivals, including me. He was already having problems handling these 6.
One guy thought we should have informed the tower that there would be a group of planes all wanting to go to the airport restaurant. He arrived about 20 minutes after me and said the controller was really overworked. The last guy arrived an hour after I did and didn't notice any problem.
I think that an additional 10 planes on a Sunday afternoon should be well within the norms for a job well done and a warning that there are 10 of us is needless, if not mildly insulting. There was only 1 guy in the cab handling tower and ground. I think they usually have charter and training traffic on a Sunday.
Mine was the first plane to arrive at 11:45 and the controller had 1 plane doing touch & goes in the pattern, 2 departures, and 3 arrivals, including me. He was already having problems handling these 6.
One guy thought we should have informed the tower that there would be a group of planes all wanting to go to the airport restaurant. He arrived about 20 minutes after me and said the controller was really overworked. The last guy arrived an hour after I did and didn't notice any problem.
I think that an additional 10 planes on a Sunday afternoon should be well within the norms for a job well done and a warning that there are 10 of us is needless, if not mildly insulting. There was only 1 guy in the cab handling tower and ground. I think they usually have charter and training traffic on a Sunday.