Here is a fun story from when I did my night rating (which was at the time a rating, and required 10 night circuits).
While in he circuit, some aircraft’s PTT switch got stuck somehow, and we got treated to a lengthy explanation of an instructor to his student on the flow checks, common failures and what to do in a reasonably complex aircraft. Tower could not get through, all we got was a squeal.
There were a few aircraft in the circuit, no way to communicate, and no light signals from the Tower. Everyone just carried on with their circuits. When the episode was over (it took ages – i seem to remember 2 or 3 landings) they noticed and got off the frequencey, and tower came back, saying “thanks to xxxx for the lesson; thanks to everyone else for carrying on, aircraft on final, say callsign, cleared to land…”
Frankly, common sense cannot be replaced by detailed rules. On a clear day, with an empty runway and a suspected radio failure – of course you land.
The above one (doc4444) I found here
http://www.gcaa.com.gh/extweb/images/stories/ais/icaodoc4444.pdf
Other you can find here
Swiss Source
Where can we find these ICAO documents?
Airborne_Again wrote:
I don’t understand what you mean by “only your FP that is cleared”. Do you mean that you are cleared to final but not cleared to land?
You are cleared to land when you receive an explicit “… RWY XX, cleared to land”. This could happen at any point, depending on traffic and circumstance. It’s just that when you enter with no FP, you could also get a clearance for your shortened FP first, whatever that may be.
While on downwind and not having received a clearance for base or till final, you could extend the downwind and call an end-of-downwind to remind your presence to the controller.
I’d always understood that once you are in the circuit, you continue in the circuit. If you fail to get a landing clearance, you go around. But you don’t decide to extend downwind, orbit or anything, simply because you haven’t been cleared onto the next leg of the circuit.
Having a look through some ICAO docs this evening, I came across this
It seems to suggest that your clearance to join downwind or join base, is a clearance to enter the circuit, rather than a clearance to fly that particular leg.
At “Downwind” call, night “VFR”, in rain, i was told “Report Final”. I’d heard no other traffic. When I called “Final”, i got no reply. I continued, after several calls adding “Transmitting blind”. I then realised the landing light was a dim glow in the rain. I switched it off, landed, taxied to hangar, updating with my position, and “Transmitting blind”.
On phoning the tower, they approved what I had done. They had heard all my transmissions, and had given me a green light, but I had not been looking at the tower at that time. I had a handheld, but didn’t take it out of my flight-bag in that situation.
If cleared to final, after a radio failure at that point a landing, and clear runway, looks to me the safest and least trouble causing action.
When I put on the landing light, the charging system had been unable to keep up with drain. The Edo-Aire radio had a solenoid which returned to receive after transmission. With the low battery, this did not happen.
I could see “cleared inbound for full stop landing” (would be interesting to see exact phraseology) being similar to a “clear for the procedure” when doing an approach and not imply a landing clearance (but that wording in english is poor as can lead to confusion – If people are confused at their desk, you can imagine how worse in the air)
LeSving wrote:
In essence you are “cleared to land” 10 miles away, but it’s only your FP that is cleared.
I don’t understand what you mean by “only your FP that is cleared”. Do you mean that you are cleared to final but not cleared to land?
LeSving wrote:
In essence you are “cleared to land” 10 miles away, but it’s only your FP that is cleared. You still need explicit clearances inside the CTR.
This doesn’t sound right to me. I guess my theory exams are more recent than those of any of you, and what I was taught is that “cleared to land” means exactly that, i.e. that you can proceed to land on the assigned runway unless your clearance is revoked on the way. In fact I was taught that if you are “cleared to land” you don’t even have to adhere to the traffic pattern at all (at a controlled airport), you can go straight to the runway and land:
I landed at a controlled airport only once so far (at Bremen – EDDW) and I was “cleared to land” right when entering the CTR. We then disregarded the usual VFR patterns for EDDW and went straight to the runway and landed.
jfw wrote:
If you are cleared to land…you can go all the way till landing.
How is that strange? Whenever you start your engine on the ground, you cannot do anything before you have requested (and received) a clearance. If you have filed a FP, then the tower will know what the clearence is, if not, you have to tell them what you want, for instance VFR to ENOP. Then you receive a clearance to leave the control zone, via whatever and runway YYY and squak and bla bla. Then you have to request taxi, then you cannot enter the runway, and cannot take off until you have received explicit clearances. It is exactly the same when entering the field, only opposite. Your “FP” must be cleared first (as I understand it), then you need explicit clearances, it’s controlled airspace.
OK, maybe it is a bit strange, but that is how it is. It is not that many years ago we started with these clearances (of the FP.) around her. I don’t remember, maybe 5-7-10? years ago. I’m sure it is an EASA thing though …
