The Condition — Page 73, Lesson 56

I want to walk you through a specific type of clearance you'll use on the ground — the conditional clearance. This is a clearance that depends on another event happening first, and it has very strict rules for both the controller and the pilot. The key condition here is: when the clearance involves an active runway, both the controller and the pilot must have seen the aircraft or vehicle that the clearance refers to. So if a controller tells you to line up behind a landing aircraft, they need to have visual contact with that aircraft, and you as the pilot need to see it too. No one is cleared based on radar or hearsay — it's a visual condition. Let me give you the example from the book. The controller says: "Oxford 95 behind the landing Airbus line up and wait behind" Notice the structure: the controller states the condition first — "behind the landing Airbus" — then gives the instruction — "line up and wait" — and then repeats the condition at the end — "behind." That repetition of "behind" at the end is part of the standard phraseology. Now, your readback must follow the same pattern, with one critical difference: your aircraft call sign goes at the end of the readback. So you would say: "Behind the landing Airbus line up and wait behind, Oxford 95" You repeat the condition, the instruction, and the condition again, exactly as the controller said it, and then you tag your call sign at the very end. This ensures there's no confusion about which aircraft is responding and that the conditional nature of the clearance is fully acknowledged. So the rule is simple: the readback mirrors the clearance word-for-word, and the call sign is placed at the end. That's the standard for conditional clearances involving an active runway.