Forgive me for perhaps sounding a bit daft with my first post, but I just wanted to clear something up for my peace of mind…
Yesterday I was departing EGLC and contacted ATC for pushback and taxi clearance as usual. Controller told me to taxi to the runway, so I started to taxi. I then got another message telling me to hold short, which I noted, followed by another telling me to taxi to the runway and line up and wait, so I continued as originally planned.
When I got to the runway, I got a message saying I was not cleared to enter the runway. So I exited, and got an immediate message telling me to taxi to the runway. I got back on the runway, and got another message telling me I wasn’t cleared to enter the runway. There was no traffic in the region at all at this point.
My understanding is that hold short means hold short, and taxi to runway means taxi on to the runway when ‘line up and wait’ is included. Is this a case of maybe someone new playing with ATC or am I missing something here?
The ATC has to clear you for back taxi. So when they say taxi to runway 12 and contact tower for example, once you get to the hold short you contact tower, and ask for takeoff. Then they will tell you to back taxi. Hope this helps.
He never did. I don’t recall there being the option, although I’m not massively familiar with the airport. I recall entering the runway at the end, or close enough to the end considering I was in a Citation.
Thanks. I lined up as per instructions and was about to switch to tower when I was told I didn’t have clearance to enter the runway. That’s what confused me…
Wait how did you get line up and wait from ground? And also on ts1 some controllers are good and some aren’t. You have to deal with it and try to work out the message they are trying to get across.
I’d probably already switched to tower at that point then. It was the same controller on both, so I don’t recall at which point I switched. I probably was on tower, thinking about it, as when I finally took off I sent a sarcastic ‘thank you, good day’. Unprofessional, I know, but I was narked…[quote=“AdamCallow, post:13, topic:64880, full:true”]
Wait how did you get line up and wait from ground? And also on ts1 some controllers are good and some aren’t. You have to deal with it and try to work out the message they are trying to get across.
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You are instructed to taxi to the runway and contact tower. Whilst that instruction does not explicitly say hold short, it implies it, and in any case a runway should never be entered without a positive instruction to do so. The ground controller can also give a specific hold short instruction which seems to have happened. This isn’t strictly necessary but sometimes is given if it doesn’t look like you are stopping behind the hold short point, or simply to emphasise you need to hold short. I don’t think ground can instruct you to back-taxi or line up, that only comes from the tower.
So what you should have done is taxi to the runway holding point (A or B for 09, D for 27) and not enter the runway, switch to tower, and tower would then instruct you to either line up if you were at A or B for 09 take-off, or enter and back taxi for 27 and either line up straight away or come off at K and wait in the loop.
Just to add that I did a bit of controlling at LCY (TS1) recently and this seemed to be a fairly common error which is people assumed that the taxi to 27 and contact tower instruction also mean they could just enter the runway and taxi down it. As the ground controller I did use the additional hold short instruction a few times to emphasise that is what was expected.
But on getting the line up and wait instruction from tower, then doing so, why was I told I then didn’t have clearance to enter? That’s what’s confused me. Ground said hold short, tower said line up and wait. Both were being controlled by the same person.
You seem to be confused though since you were claiming you had already receive a line up instruction and had actually entered and lined up prior to switching to tower (see your 4th post). As noted that sequence cannot have happened.
My earlier post shows what should happen at LCY. If you were instructed to line up by the tower, and then the tower said you didn’t have clearance, then that would be incorrect of the controller.
It was over 24 hours ago, I’ve done a number of far more interesting flights since then and I was typing that on an iPad as best as I could from memory. It’s quite likely the sequence was off, but I wanted to double check what correct protocol would be in the situation (even if I described it poorly). I’ve only done 50-odd landings on Online, but even so that sort of incident wasn’t something I’d come across before so wanted to check.
