pigbenis Rookie

BACK-TAXI- A term used by air traffic controllers to taxi an aircraft on the runway opposite to the traffic flow. The aircraft may be instructed to back-taxi to the beginning of the runway or at some point before reaching the runway end for the purpose of departure or to exit the runway.

As far as I know the only official place to find anything related to back-taxi(in the .65) is in the pilot/controller glossary. You will find no phraseology on this, please correct me if i'm wrong because i have looked. The most common place to see this type of movement utilized is at smaller airports with less going on or because of some sort of construction like a taxiway closure.

Here is my question to others. What is your back-taxi phraseology? It seems like a very big grey area in the .65 that could possibly lead to some heated tower debate.

At my airport this recently came up because we do have a taxiway closure parallel to one of the runways so the only way for an airplane to get to full length is to back-taxi to the end, a 2,900' taxi on the runway. At the end there is room for small aircraft to pull off onto the small open portion of the taxiway to do a 180 to hold short(no large runup area). However, this is not possible for larger aircraft thus the only option for them is to position and hold(we do have a waiver for TIPH). This leads me to my second question.

What are you expecting the aircraft to do upon back-taxi? The answer to this question greatly varies depending on your answer to the first and the technique involved.

I realize not everyone has TIPH so a few of you may be rusty at this but please throw in your opinions. Like before, i'm going to refrain from saying anything at first in hopes to not sway anyones response from reading the initial post. I'll toss my .02 after a few replies.

If i missed anything while explaining the airport scenario just lemme know and i'll edit the post to clarify. we do have crossing runways, but I feel the only necessary information is what I posted a few paragraphs above.

EDIT: Pilots, how do you handle this instruction?