On Saturday, May 30, 2020 at 3:47:41 PM UTC-4, Charles Ethridge wrote:
Hi all.

I've done thousands of landings in all kinds of airplanes at tower-controlled airports (now called Class B, C and D), but I've never seen a glider land at one.

Does ATC frown upon this (unless one declares an emergency in which case you have a new problem) or to they take this in stride and accommodate us gliders as an unusual but accepted part of their workday?

Faced with the choice of this or a field, what would insurance say if I broke the glider landing in the field? Might insurance deny my claim since there was a perfectly good tower-controlled airport within gliding distance?

If this is an accepted practice at tower-controlled fields, how do you get the glider off the taxiway? Do they have an FBO come out and tow you off?

Ben

Many moons ago, I had to land out at the 'Wheeling-Ohio Co.' airport in WVa, which at the time was towered - god only knew why! The controller allowed me to try to climb out if I stayed in a particular sector but when that didn't work out, cleared me to land on the not active runway and asked to stop short of the intersection with the active one. After I stopped, he asked me to contact 'Ground' - which turned out to be the same guy - for further assistance. He sent a pickup truck with a rope to get me to the ramp. When I walked into the terminal building, I asked a guy with a mop and a bucket where the restrooms were and that voice sounded awfully familiar .... ;-)
When our club hosted the SSA convention in Greenville, SC, I flew rides in our transponder-equipped G103 out of GMU, right next to the convention center. GMU is located under the class C of GSP and is towered. It was kind of interesting to be sequenced in with the other traffic and cleared to land on the shorter cross-wind runway.
As others mentioned, if you come across like you know what you are doing and if you are not trying to land at LAX, the controllers will work with you.

Uli
'AS'