PilotEdge Forums

Several times, I have landed at a towered airport and, after exiting the runway, have not been cleared to contact Ground.
I have contacted Tower to inform them that I have exited the runway and they have then cleared me to taxi to parking.
Is this normal behaviour depending on volume of traffic and should I switch to Ground at any stage without being cleared to change channels?
Thanks,
Toby

Never switch to ground on your own. The main reason is because you never know which movement areas the tower actually owns (especially at airports with multiple airports). The switch from ground to tower when you’re ready for takeoff is on your own, but not the other way around.

Thanks Kevin. Do Tower actually give Ground directions as well in the real world?

toby23 wrote:Thanks Kevin. Do Tower actually give Ground directions as well in the real world?

Yes, very often there is only one controller in the RW working both positions. And they will often have you remain on the tower frequency as you taxi to parking rather than switch to the published ground freq.

Other times, even if there are separate ground and tower controllers, if there's very little activity going on at the airport, tower will coordinate with ground on your behalf, get permission to issue the taxi instruction to you (particularly when the ramp is close to the runway exit) and will say, "taxi to the ramp, monitor ground point xxxx." In that case, you taxi to the ramp and tune into ground (in case they need to call you for some odd reason), but you don't actually call them.

If it was never done that way in real life, we wouldn't do it here either as we try not to do anything which is PE-specific.

Thank you. Learning more every day..