Did you know IRL, when a pilot wants to cross the runway, instead of contacting the ground and asking for permission, that you are supposed to contact the tower and ask?
If you didn’t know this fact, here is a simple reason: Everyone knows that the tower controls the airspace and runways at the airport, and the ground, well handles the ground control. So since the runways are controlled by the tower, you contact the tower to cross the.
Depends on IFATC, I’ve had an instance to where ground passed me to tower, tower passed my back to ground, then passed me again back to tower and finally they cleared me. Happened a while ago though
sometimes, ATC will issue a runway crossing after you request for taxi, thus when you reach the threshold, you can just cross it like you don’t care. Wish this is a thing in IF.
As far as I’m concerned when exiting the runway, the command is XXX, when able turn right, cross RWY XX and contact ground. So in this case runway cross is issued by Tower.
When taxiing to a RWY however, it’s always the Ground to issue.