RHAG Hold Short --- is not good R/T
No ATCO should ever say 'hold short of runway xx'. Don't give a toss what any book says, it's bad practice and will lead to a runway incursion. I've seen this very thing happen at my unit in the last 12 months. The ATCO involved had a talking to from me afterwards.
Should you ever be given an instruction telling you to 'hold short of runway xx', you should ask for clarification of exactly where you are to hold.
SN,
Unit Competancy Examiner,
Out-in-the-sticks International
Can think of much R/T that had been added, changed and removed from the good book of R/T. Just because its in the good book of one country or used by people in another country, it does not mean its good R/T.
Dont care what they say at LHR, listen to the BBC TV series East Enders and you'll see that they dont talk to good anyway.
Remember, if there is room for a missunderstanding to become an error, it will become an accident, sooner or later.
If hold lines are present, why on earth would anyone need to clarify where a pilot should "Hold short of Rwy XX" while they are on a taxiway unless they've; 1) neglected to learn what pavement markings mean, 2) don't understand the end of the taxiway end and runway beginning is defined by the hold lines, and 3) those lines coincide with their taxi clearance limit?
Hold lines delineate the taxiway side from the runway side, and are usually co-located with white on red signage drawing your attention to the fact that anything past those indicators is "runway". No part of the aircraft should cross the hold lines onto the runway side until a runway clearance is issued. That's exactly where you should hold. There is no fuzzy no-man's-land area after the hold lines...it's considered runway. Go past them without clearance, and it's an incursion.
"Hold short of Twy xx" is hardly "bad practice". On the contrary, unless there's a failure on the part of the pilot to understand basic pavement markings (quite frankly, PPL stuff) or the markings or signage are nonexistant, it's a perfectly clear, acceptable, and unambiguous instruction. If there's any misunderstanding, it sounds more like a local unit problem of not opening the books.