PilotEdge Forums

When in doubt, I default to "taxi to tower..." I did the same thing.

I'm just glad the controllers are very nice. More than once they have helped me along, and I thank them for that.

AtomicFrawg wrote:Sooooo last night I did the V-2 check ride (for practice, the real deal will come tonight), I found a flaw in my flight planning.

Upon landing at ONT I exited the runway and called out to tower. He then asked me where I want to go...... My reply was, "I have no Idea". It was all I could come up with at that time. Tower giggled and said taxi via Sierra.

Soooooo, Learn from my mistake and always know where you are going, once you get to where you are going.

No joke, this is part of my pre-flight back at home before I even go to the airport. And, if I'm unfamiliar with the airport, I'll actually call one of the FBO's (usually one with which I am most familiar, like Atlantic, SheltAir, etc.) or even a flight school just to ask them specific procedures about the airport and surrounding airspace. It makes the life of the controllers a lot more pleasing!

Do you have Foreflight? When you look at the overview of an airport, the picture at the top lists the local FBO's. One trick I do when I either control or fly is identify the locations of these ahead of time, this way I know how to handle or make a request. AOPA Airports and Airnav also do this on their websites, as well.

But, even simpler, you can view the airport diagram, locate a reasonable parking location and ask to taxi to the ramp. For example, you exited left off of Runway 26L and held short of taxiway Sierra. On the airport diagram, you see that there is GA parking by S3. I would simply ask to "Taxi to the GA parking off of S3."