atrdriver said:
I have heard as many controllers use non standard phraseology as I have heard pilots.....
I doubt it. Listen to the controllers and listen to the pilots. I have. Sure you occasionally hear controllers use non-standard prhrases, but it not anywhere near as prevelant as it is in pilots.
I'd be willing to bet that you'll *never* hear a tower controller tell a pilot to "assume the position" instead of "taxi into position and hold" or "roll em" instead of cleared for takeoff. on hte other hand, I wouldn't make that bet about pilots. One of the reasons is that controllers are trainied, and evaluated on thier commumications. Periodically they have "Tape Talks" in which they pull tapes of each invdividual controller and review thier communicatins and grade them on it. If they're using a bunch of CB slang, the review is not going to go well for them.
If you work with a particular facility on a daily basis, you can tell when a facility has had "Tape Talks", the controllers suddenlyl are using excruciatingly correct phraseology, and and you hear "tree" and "fife" in an almost exaggereated manner. Over time, it becomes less pronounced, and things get a little more casual ... until the next tape talk. Pilots, on the other hand, generally do not have any sort of official review of thier communications procedures, so the sloppy ones just continue getting sloppier over the years.
Here's a scenario: you're the controller, you're working a plane which is at FL250, on a heading of 230 at 250 knots. There is overtaking traffic converging from the right.
You say delta XXX, descend and maintain FLight Level 240.
He's a "cool guy" so he says "Raaaaaaaaajjj-o two-four-oh, here we go"
SO, first off, you don't know for sure if that's even the correct airplane responding, cause he didn't identify himself. Aside from that, you know what you said, but you have no idea what he heard. SOmone else might have yeyed up and said "Cessna 1234 with a request" so all they heard was "Delta XXX (Loud squeal) two four zero.
So does "Raaaaaaaaajjj-o two-four-oh, here we go" mean that they are descending to Fl240, or they are turning right to heading 240, or they are slowing up to 240 knots?
Note that only one of those will resolve the impending conflict. SO what do you do? Assume he heard correctly, and risk getting a "deal" (you get what? 3 in a career than you're fired??) Or do you ask him to confirm descending to FL240, which wastes time, which you don't have much of because you're busy?
Wouldn't it be better instead, to have some geeky, uncool guy who responded with Roger, Delta xxx leaving fl250, descending fl240. then you'd know without any further thought he'd heard what you said.
Or, if he misheard, "roger, Delta right turn, heading 240" then you'd know immediately tht he *didn't* hear you correctly, and you can correct that before the situation develops further. The purpose of a readback is not to confirm that the pilot heard something, it's to confirm that he heard you correctly, and "Raaaaaaaaajjj-o two-four-oh, here we go" doesn't accomplish that with any level of certianty.
If it means making the controllers job easier (and it does) I'll be that uncool guy who *doesn't* say "Raaaaaaaaajjj-o two-four-oh, here we go"
(insert snide comment from mar about how high a DC-6 flies)