Today marks the end of ATC Instruction “Taxi to . . .”

The Us Department of Transportation in a FAA Air Traffic Organisation policy has decreed that from today, June 30^th, 2010 that the instruction “Taxi to . . . “ is to be abolished.  Apparently this phrase virtually meant that once issued to a pilot, the aircraft could taxi to the assigned take-off runway and cross all runways and taxiways without further authority.

This was felt to be a safety issue and ATC instructions in future must give specific instructions for each runway crossing and the instruction will not be given until an aircraft has cleared a previous runway crossing.

So a new instruction could sound something like this: “Cross Runway Two Eight Left and hold short of Runway two eight right”
Authorising the aircraft to taxi to the take off runway could sound like this: “Runway Three Six Left via taxiway Alpha, hold short of Runway Two Seven Right”.
More details here

Wonder when we’ll see this in FSX??