Captain 7,
Have to jump in and offer my 2 cents on this one, but the original post really is small stuff. With 21,000 hrs, I truly hope you have some international time, otherwise you are missing out on some great “non-standard” calls. Maybe because I’ve spent 2 tours in Italy, I find that phrases like “with you,” “checking-in,” “good afternoon,” “ciao,” etc. make comms a bit more civil. In London, where you will get a handoff about every 90 sec, the controllers will still respond with “cheers,” in you take the extra 3 sec to insert a cordiality. Even Saturday, the guy working Atlanta asked us if Treasure Island was closed because he used to be stationed there.
What is important, IMHO, is too get the numbers right. We had a crew doing a practice NDB approach at night to Zadar, a small field on the Croation coast. Approach called an altimeter of “0992” (0992 mB) and the crew read back “altimeter 2992.” The helmet fire began to smolder and three times they asked “confirm altimeter 2992,” “affirmative, 992” was the reply. The difference comes out to 435’ low! Fortunately they realized the error when they crossed checked the radalt.
On the humorous side, I’ve heard: “Ciao bella” as the Napoli controller flirts w/ my female copilot on the handoff to Roma; “Navy531, whatever you want, it’s OK with us,” while doing practice approaches at Pescara; “NavyMS503, cotton, daw on da wonwaaay,” (…caution, dogs on the runway) from U’Tapaho tower, etc. Never actually heard this one, but the story goes a crew report “light rock activity” as they tooled around Mt. Etna VFR; yes they torn up the airplane…
My all-time favorite funny though was back as a new LT when I was flying with a senior LCDR. Waiting for 15+ min in the baking July sun on the ramp at Naples for start clearance to go home to Sig after 5 legs already. Ground finally calls us back and my aircraft commander starts shouting “YEAH, BRAVO, BRAVO, YEAH!” Being young and stupid, I hold the mic over and click the switch… An Alitalia guy comes up and asks “What the hell is going on?,” to which ground replies “Somebody must be drunk!” We laughed our behinds off the whole way home.
Keep it in perspective, just my 2 cents…