Cleared TO, aircraft very short final
Hello,
Just thought I would talk about a suprising safety issue I experienced today down in the canaries which shocked myself and the skipper. Clearly the tower forgot about an aircraft they cleared to land quite far out (my speculation, earlier in the day on the same approach we were cleared to land about 12 miles out), we were approaching the hold and called 'XXXX xxx hold A1 ready for departure' response was 'XXX xxx cleared takeoff runway XX surface wind xxx/xx with the aircraft about 10 seconds from touchdown on the approach.
We were in an old A320 with non pop-up TCAS, so no instrument indication of the aircraft on the approach; thankfully good visual so we knew what the aircraft was doing by looking out of our window so we declined (previously on ground freq so no RT confirmation of what was going on). Either way I was shocked that 1) the controller seemingly forgot about the aircraft 2) the controller clearly wasn't looking out of the window when we were cleared takeoff. Even while the landing aircraft touched down, we were asked why we weren't responding to the clearance to take off. During the roll-out of the other aircraft, the realisation of the situation occured, followed by some confused sounds, then 'line up only.' The controller then changed and we went from there.
The only thoughts we had were that 1) we were very glad we were good visual 2) suprised with many hours instructing at small ATC fields, never did I get such a dangerous clearance; finally when it happened it was at a fairly major airfield.
A good look out before line-up is a very good thing!