I'm not an Air Trafficer but as a pilot my understanding of civilian ops is that 'Tower' own the runway. The only way an Approach controller can issue a landing clearance is to co-ordinate it with Tower (who are controlling not only landings, but also departures, runway crossings etc).
That might work OK on a PAR in the Military, but with the situation you describe with understaffed ATC, the Approach controller would still have to overcome the bottleneck of the combined Ground / Tower to get you a landing clearance, so you'd have been no better off.
SSD
Last edited by Shaggy Sheep Driver; 10th Jul 2006 at 16:57.