Galea

I did this mistake when I first started training. It was embarrasing but somewhat funny. I'm sure the tower enjoyed it. This is at a small airport, where a TCA overlaps. For departing VFR to the training area your restricted to 2400 ft for about 10 miles unless you want to enter the TCA.

C172: Ground, this is cessna 172 GABC with info mike

Ground: GABC go ahead.

C172: Ground, GABC on North Apron request taxi to active for local north 2-4 thousand.

oops. I meant 2thousand 4 hundred!

Spartan07

You've really got to hand it to those controllers at Riverside. My hat is off to all those guys and gals that have to baby sit all of those students in one of the busiest GA airports in the world. They really earn their pay in my book, especially when we have stuff like the PGA tournament in town. That was a pretty hectic week and they just handled it in stride.

snippercr

Ive made it up to page 35 and figured Id post a few. Im not in the regionals yet but hopefully these still count :-)

I was on the phone with FSS and he was giving me a breif at this one airport. There were about 5 NOTAMs for a runway (lights out, approach lights out, unlit tower, ILS glide slope out, ILS localizer out) and after all these NOTAMS he lets out a long sigh, "And of course, that particular runway is closed. Son of a *****, I wish they would put that one FIRST so I didnt have to read the rest" Poor guy... he seemed like the end of a LONG day.

At an uncontrolld (06C) airport in Chicago area, my instructor was doing an IFR flight and the cig was below 1000 feet so he couldnt take off VFR. He called FSS on GCO to get clearance and they would not give it to him since they were landing east at Ohare. He wait about 20 minutes and finally FSS said "Well, they've stopped landing at Ohare because of severe thunderstorms, windshear and heavy microburst activity. Advise when ready to copy clearance"
Needless to say, he cancled his flight.

And while training at UofI CMI, i heard tower welcome some one to "Touch N Go Land"

determined2fly

I heard a commercial pilot asking for a review on departure procedures on initial contact with clearence.

Drums4life

When I was working at KTOL a couple years a ago a girl was on her first solo cross country flight. I was inside our lobby at the time and had our radio tuned to tower frequency. The tower said to her, "cessna 1234 cleared for takeoff runway 25 turn heading 270 climb and maintain 3500" so hearing the words turn heading 270 the girl proceeded to turn to that heading on the runway, the baffled controller replied, "no no no, cessna 1234 takeoff first and then turn to a heading of 270!" I felt bad for this girl who obviously wasnt ready to solo yet but couldn't help but laugh at the situation.

cfii2007

Gee....I wonder what school he was training at!

snippercr

First time I heard a clearance like that it confused me a bit too. The controller here at CMI said "Archer 1234UI turn right heading 090 maintain 3000 cleared take off runway 32r"... i always thought it would make more sense to put the take off clearance FIRST but oh wells.

cessna157

They are trained to give other instructions first before the takeoff clearance due to the possibility of the following scenario:
Initial clearance was to maintain 6000 feet. You taxi into position and hold. There is an aircraft that is crossing the departure corridor for your runway at 5000 feet:
<ATC> "Airline### runway 27 you're cleared for takeoff, maintain runway heading and 5000 feet for crossing traffic at 6000."
<Airline###> upon heading the phrase "cleared for takeoff" immediately keys mike and says "Cleared for takeoff, airline###"
Now take the same setup:
<ATC>"Airline###, fly runway heading, maintain 5000 for crossing traffic at 6000, runway 27, you're cleared for takeoff"

In the first example, the pilot heard cleared for takeoff and stepped on the controller's additional instructions with his readback. In the second, there is almost no chance of that happening, as if he does stop on the controller with the readback, he'll just be sitting on the runway, expecting to climb to 5000.

weasil

Funniest I ever heard was the automated ATIS broadcast in Oakland one christmas night, he was singing in his robot voice "it's saturday night, and I ain't got noboooddy..."

cessna157

If you guys want to hear some interesting ATC, check out liveatc.net It's free to join. Check out the forums and there's lots of funny audio that people have posted there.