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Pilotinside.com Magazine Volume III : Issue 1

" Montgomery… err, Ramona Tower, umm, ..., Cessna 7-2-6-Romeo-Juliet, ..., umm, ... We're uhh, ..., hang on... [mic remains keyed, then 5 seconds later] yeah, we're over San Vincente at uhh, …, three thousand five hundred feet.

Oh, umm, Touch and Go's with Uniform."

As the controller furiously pulls the final patch of hair follicles from his head and the other pilots on frequency start to boil in relation to Michael Douglas strolling down the interstate with a shotgun in the movie Falling Down, the radio goes silent. The other pilots settle in anticipation to see how this brave controller will handle the situation. About three seconds later, after the Controller has massaged his ears in a Zen-like manner chanting "Woosah, ..., Woosah," he reply’s in a calm voice,

"Cessna 7-2-6-Romeo-Juliet, Ramona Tower, enter left-base runway two-seven, report a two-mile base."

Introduction

Regardless of what the Federal Aviation Regulations say, radio communication is no longer an option, it is a necessity. In busy airspaces such as San Diego, Los Angeles, or San Francisco, flying around without good radios and good communication skills isn't just a bad idea, its suicide. For all of the student pilots out there, this article is not intended to scare you, but instead to enlighten you. Communicating properly isn't a joke and isn't something to take lightly. Keeping planes separated and coordinated is a tough job that Air Traffic Control has a hard enough time keeping up with while using this ancient half-duplex communication system that we call a two-way radio.

When there are 10 planes in the pattern and five on approach there simply isn't a second to spare and it is our responsibility to make every second count and not waste time. The safety of ourselves and other pilots absolutely depends on our precision in the art of radio communication. This article is designed to give everyone a fresh perspective on radio communication. Air Traffic Controllers have the highest rate of stress among any profession. In this article, we will explore where the stress comes from and most importantly how to make sure that we don’t add to it. This article will help you dust off those cobwebs and learn how to talk properly on those walkie-talkies again!

Let us begin by discussing exactly what a controlling job entails. An Air Traffic Controller’s job is to safely coordinate air traffic from one place to another. A Controller on average has more lives run through his or her hands in one day than a surgeon does in their entire career. The difference between a controller and a surgeon is that a controller can’t do their job without the cooperation from their patients. Secondly, a Controller does not have any assistants helping them and finally, when they make a mistake a lot more than one individual is affected. Air Traffic Controllers have a great deal of stress on their plate everyday and the responsibility they carry on their shoulders is tremendous. Controllers should be treated with the utmost respect and receive the highest achievable level of cooperation and obedience from every pilot. ATC provides inseparable services to the aviation community and for that we should always struggle to help them in any way we can.

Now let’s try to understand a little about how ATC gets the job done. Controllers are divided into separate jobs based on how busy an airspace or airport is. Ground Control is responsible for all traffic that moves about the surface of an airport. Ground may also give flight plan clearances and coordinate in-flight services if their workload permits. If you were to start up your engine at a towered airport, you would make a request to taxi to a runway with Ground Control, prior to moving on the surface. At busy airports, clearances and the coordination of in-flight services may be further divided into what is called Clearance Delivery, another type of controller. The last primary type of controller is Tower Control. Before crossing or taxiing onto a runway, taking off or landing, or just flying through an airport’s airspace, you would speak to Tower Control. There are many other types of controllers including departure, approach, center, and more. The scope of this article however deals primarily with Ground and Tower control only.

Radio Communication is the means in which ATC delivers instructions and receives confirmation in the efforts to coordinate air traffic. Each controller will have a separate frequency to communicate with pilots. The communication that takes place between a pilot and a controller is half-duplex, meaning that only one person may speak at a time. Every ATC instruction takes place through a two step process and every request made by a pilot requires a three step process. When ATC delivers an instruction the pilot simply confirms the instruction in a response, hence two steps. When a pilot makes a request to ATC, ATC returns either an approval or denial with special instructions at which point the pilot confirms the response. This is the three step process.

The Federal Aviation Administration has a strict and regimented format by which ATC communicates. Controllers do not waste time, speak out of context, nor deliver too much information. Most importantly, they do not lax in their amazing system of standardization. Unfortunately, that is where we pilots come in. We take an amazing and precise art form like communication and through time, allow ourselves to become relaxed and lazy in the ways in which we get our messages across. In the meantime we carry a hypocritical expectation of ATC to come through with that traffic or terrain avoidance call every time without any slip-ups. As pilots we should struggle to be the best at every task which we perform in the air, including radio communication. We must assist ATC in their quest to keep the skies safe.

Air Traffic Controllers manage to keep up their end of the bargain so why do we pilots have such a problem helping them out? We are in-fact the cause of most of our own problems. The answer lies in the slogan of a popular aviation magazine, AOPA Flight Training. Every pilot should embrace the phrase found on the outer cover of every issue which reads, "A Good Pilot is Always Learning." If every pilot maintained a "student-for-life" attitude, consistently trying to become a better pilot with each new hour spent in the plane then accidents would decrease in a straight line with experience. Unfortunately, as shown by accident statistics, experience is a double edged sword.

The 2004 NALL Report, published by the Air Safety Foundation, shows that pilots with around 3,000 hours have the least accidents. Those with less or more experience than 3,000 hours will have a higher probability for having an accident. It would seem that those with less than 3,000 hours do not yet have the ideal amount of wisdom and experience, but are obviously working at it. On the other hand, those with more experience seem to lose sight of that student mentality. These are the pilots that kick the tire for pre-flight, jump-in, do a GPS plug-in, and off they go. As the saying goes, there are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots. I would like to convince you to fly a lot and live a long happy life doing it. All you need to accomplish this is to hold onto that student-pilot mentality. After all, there are no police up there handing out tickets to keep everyone sharp so it’s up to us to maintain a high level of proficiency. If you work at it you'll find that shining proficiency will make flying much more enjoyable and confidence building. Now with this idea in mind, let’s take that newly formed attitude to the microphone and really learn how to communicate as opposed to just making noise.

[2004 NALL Report, http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/04nall.pdf]

Common Mistakes in Radio Communication

There are two main mistakes that pilots make in radio communication and whether they come from improper teachings or laziness is impertinent. Keep in mind that this does not include mistakes like not following instructions, not listening, or forgetting an instruction. These aren't communication problems; they are personal problems, such as middle-aged short-term memory loss or passenger distraction syndrome. Dealing with those problems involves time, practice, and a little patience. The two biggest mistakes in communicating are the use of slang and talking too much. First off, we will explore slang.

The other day, a friend of mine and I were admiring a gorgeous Ferrari parked on the ramp at the airport. I looked over to him and I asked, "How much do you think that thing costs," and he replied, "probably a buck-fifty." I gave him a curious look in disbelief and said, "uh-huh, sure." It took me a few seconds before I realized that he meant one-hundred and fifty thousand. In order for effective communication to take place between two individuals both the sender and the receiver must utilize the same language and understand it. We have all heard the airline captain on the radio, thinking he's tough stuff, call out to approach that they are, "two point five, climbing to flight level twenty-one point zero." What on earth does "two point five" mean? Imagine being the first controller who ever heard this nonsense and then in a split seconds time, while dealing with fifty other aircraft, try to figure out its meaning. Always remember that when you are communicating up there, you aren't just talking to ATC. When you make a position report or give out other information hundreds of pilots could be monitoring that frequency. Monitoring a frequency is all part of seeing and avoiding and when you take into consideration the many student pilots and foreign pilots that are out there listening on that same frequency, you’ll realize that you just bulldozed the neighborhood watch program. Those pilots are honestly not going to get any useful information out of your report. But that’s ok because you sounded cool right? Wrong! Slang defeats the purpose of communicating in the first place. Simply put, it is like communicating to someone in a foreign language that doesn’t speak it. Aviation is admirable because it’s a functioning, harmonious-for-the-most-part, system. A system is by definition supported by its rules and a system or anything built is much more admirable than a rule broken or a system destroyed. Would you admire a military that was completely disorganized, couldn't function together, and couldn't march in unison? Of course you wouldn’t, and you shouldn't admire pilots that think that they are better than the rest either.

I myself have been guilty of using slang, such as in one of my favorite airplanes, Cessna 726RJ. Sometimes I would say, "seven-two-six-R-J," instead of, "six-Romeo-Juliet," until I realized that a "J" can sound like an "A." I then remembered why we have the phonetic alphabet in the first place. It’s for the same reason that we say one-zero thousand, instead of ten-thousand. Using standard communication eliminates the possibility for misunderstandings.

One of my favorite forms of slang is listening to pilots talk to departure on climb-out. They might say something like: "Cessna one-seven-two-romeo-whisky is climbing at four thousand for five thousand five hundred." If the controller isn't paying extremely close attention, this could very well sound like the person is climbing at forty-five thousand five hundred feet. The intermediate "for" sounds like the number four, and could potentially be quite confusing. Now we are supposed to use the word "Flight Level" above eighteen thousand feet which would eliminate any possible confusion, except, so many pilots have spoken slang for so long that ATC is now used to not hearing the term "flight level." If a pilot would simply use what the Aeronautical Information Manual recommends in this situation, there would be no possibly way for miscommunication to take place. The Aeronautical Information Manual in this case would recommend that the pilot say, "Cessna one-seven-two-romeo-whisky, four thousand climbing five thousand five hundred." Now that sentence is just about impossible to mistake.

[AIM Chapter 4-2, http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/AIM/Chap4/aim0402.html]

Using connecting words to form sentences so that they can sound nice and grammatically correct are also considered slang radio communication. Inserting extra words like "a", "and", "the", "for", "to", etc. are time consuming and not necessary when communicating with the radio. Try to only use words that are required to get your message across as described in chapter 4, section 2 of the AIM.

Initial Calls and Requests to Air Traffic Control

The second and biggest mistake pilots make when speaking on the radio is speaking too much. Pilots generally speak too much when ATC delivers them an instruction or on the callback when making a request to ATC. There are very few pilots that speak too much on the initial call out and that is because there is a very specific format in which to make initial calls. To understand this more, let’s learn the format in which Pilots and Air Traffic Controllers communicate. Both Pilots and Controllers utilize a very standard format when communicating back and forth to one another. This communication follows a format known as WIPAR. From left to right, this acronym stands for "Who you are talking to," "Identify Yourself," "Position," "Altitude (If Applicable)," and "Requests and/or Remarks."

Let’s take a look at a few examples of initial calls before we learn to make call-backs.

Situation: Engine Started, and Ready to Taxi…

In this situation, you will be speaking with ground control because you are requesting to move about the surface of the airport. Now the airport may be closed, or a runway might be inactive, maybe a taxiway is out of service, or maybe the winds are really strong and you shouldn’t be flying. All of this information would be found in the ATIS report that you listen to upon engine start. ATIS changes every hour, and is then updated with a new letter to identify it. When you speak to ground control on your first call, they want to know that you have the current ATIS report which you will prove by giving them the current letter which it is identified by. If you give them an old identifier, they will ask you to get the current ATIS, or if they have time, they will actually give you the information. Either way, they want to make sure that you know what you are getting yourself into and that you are taking responsibility for the current weather and conditions at the airport. They want to make sure that you have the "picture." For this first call, we will use "Alpha" as the current ATIS weather observation.

Situation: Ready for Takeoff…

Now you are requesting to use a runway for takeoff. There may be a plane already taking off or a plane on short final for the runway and they would be talking to the tower, and so will you. As a remark however, you do not need the ATIS identifier in this situation because you couldn’t have made it out to the runway without giving it to ground. Tower knows this so omit it. Instead, tower would like to know where you are going so that they can coordinate air-traffic. Some possible remarks here are "straight-out," "left" or "right-downwind," a direction such as "east-bound," or maybe you would like to do touch and gos at which point you would request "right" or "left-closed traffic."

Situation: Flying Around…

When you’re cruising around especially in places like San Diego, you might want to monitor close-by tower or unicom frequencies. In these cases, you would simply monitor and listen to other pilots to hear where they are at and what they are doing. In San Diego, however, pilots use the FAA established air-to-air frequencies extensively. Pilots tune into 122.75 Mhz and announce where they are at and what they are doing so that any other pilots on the frequency can listen, see, and avoid. Make your call to "San Diego coastal traffic" when flying and maneuvering off-shore, "San Diego North-east traffic" when north of Ramona and east of interstate 15, "San Diego East Traffic" when east of interstate 15 and in-between Ramona and Loveland Reservoir, and to "San Diego South-east traffic" when south of Loveland Reservoir and East of Mount Helix. Notice that altitude now becomes applicable in the following example.

Situation: Returning to an Airport…

After your lesson is complete or you are finished flying around and practicing your maneuvers, you’ll want to listen to ATIS again for any changes that may have occurred while you were out flying. You’ll be speaking with Tower again for the first time in a while and so you must let them know that you have the current ATIS information again. Unlike takeoff, we won’t request a runway here. We will let tower choose a runway for us. That way, they can best coordinate traffic for the given situation. All you need to do is request landing, or maybe you’re coming back in for some touch and gos. We’ll assume that we have been flying around for about an hour and the ATIS identifier has now changed to Bravo.

Situation: Taxiing to Parking…

After you have landed, you might be instructed to taxi across a runway, or exit a runway and contact ground. Only switch to ground control once you have been instructed to do so by Tower, and make sure you only taxi where Tower instructs you to, and then hold short of any other runways and/or taxiways.

Secondary Calls and Requests to ATC

Every time you speak to a controller for the first time, you’ll want to use the formal type of initial call (WIPAR). Once you have established communication with a controller, you can simply make your requests and identify yourself using the last three characters of your call-sign. If speaking to ground, you may already be taxiing and decide to use another runway. Since you have already established communication with this controller, you can simply say "request two-eight right instead, two-three-echo." If on departure you want to head east instead of straight out, you might say, "request East-bound departure instead, two-three-echo." If you were asked to report a specific position to tower on your way in like "on base," or "abeam the tower," you would just say, " Abeam Tower, two-three-echo." If you are doing touch and gos and are ready to land, simply say, "request full-stop, two-three-echo."

The abbreviated form of call to ATC in which only a request and shortened identification is given may only be used once communication is established for the first time. Once you switch frequencies or become inactive in communicating with a controller for a while, you must utilize the full formal method again when making your call. For instance, if you spoke with tower or ground an hour ago on your way out from the airport, you cannot use the abbreviated form of communicating when talking to tower for coming back in for a landing, or with ground when you request to taxi to parking. However, once you make your first formal call to each of these entities, you may use the abbreviated form until you switch frequencies again.

Acknowledging ATC Requests and Clearances

Because there is a set format for initial communications and even for secondary calls, there isn’t much room to make a mistake or add in unnecessary information. However, whenever you are confirming an instruction or clearance given by ATC, there isn’t really any published format. This is why it is reasonable that many pilots and flight instructors alike have problems in this area. Some give up on creating any type of format and just read back everything to Air Traffic Control. This is a terrible habit that gets past down from flight instructor to student. It is a valuable waste of time and should be corrected as soon as possible. When ATC gives you an instruction or clearance there is actually very little that you should read back. Keep in mind that this is usually the third step in a request made to ATC and so you do not have to use the formal call when acknowledging. In fact at the end of every ATIS recording, ATC tells you exactly what you should say: "Read back all hold-short and runway assignments with call-sign." Right there they are creating a recipe for the absolute minimum of what they would like to hear from you. Add just a few items to this list and you will have everything that should be repeated back to the controller. When acknowledging a request or clearance from ATC, read back all: Hold-short, position-hold, runway & taxiway assignments, and traffic related information with the last three characters of your call-sign. Even in these instances, you should only read back just enough information to let ATC know that you understand their request. For instance, if they tell you that you have "traffic at eleven o’clock same altitude, opposite direction, a Bonanza." You wouldn’t read back all of this information to them, you would simply say, "Looking for traffic, two-three-echo." More importantly, if they make a request and it doesn’t include anything from the list of items to read back then just say, "two-three-echo."

The Tasks that Air Traffic Control Delivers

Controllers deliver messages in the form of tasks. The best way to decide what to read back is to quickly divide a call up into tasks and then filter out what needs to be read back and what doesn’t. Even after you have filtered out what to read back, shorten it up as much as possible so that you can get the message across without tying up valuable radio time. Take a look at the following sequence of calls.

In the example above, the controller gave us one task, taxi to the runway. Runway assignments are in our list, so we shorten it up, add our shortened call-sign and that’s it. Now how about this example…

In the instance above, the controller gave you three tasks, two traffic-related tasks, and one taxiing task. In the first task we hear the Hold-short buzzword, but we can shorten the rest of it to "one." In the second task, all that we need to let the controller know is that we are going to follow a giant hunk of metal on Hotel, the other details are not important. Therefore, we shorten it to, "follow on hotel." Lastly, we insert the runway and our abbreviated call-sign. Review a few more following examples to get a better picture of what to say during a call-back.

Departing Scenario 1 …

Departing Scenario 2 …

Departing Scenario 3 …

Enroute Scenario 1 …

Enroute Scenario 2 …

Arrival Scenario 1 …

Arrival Scenario 2 …

Arrival Scenario 3 …

Arrival Scenario 4 …

Taxi back to parking…

Summary

Obviously there is much mental computation involved in breaking calls down into tasks, filtering, and then shortening them for a call back. Remember however, that driving was also taxing your first time. With practice and time communicating will become second-nature. It will become as easy and uneventful as talking to a close friend.

Initial calls are easy because there is a very rigid format by which the call takes place. Memorize WIPAR and you have completed half the trouble in communication. When acknowledging or speaking for the second time to a controller, use the abbreviated means of communicating and be sure to shorten your call-sign. Omit what isn’t required in each radio call. Don’t read back a squawk to ATC; just give them your shortened N-number for an acknowledgment. After all, they will see the number that you squawk on their radar screen in a split seconds time and if it is wrong, they will advise you.

The way that a pilot communicates speaks volumes about how he or she will fly an airplane. Laziness and un-regimented communication standards are a mark for careless and underachieving mentalities. A good pilot is always learning, and a great pilot is always pushing themselves to higher standards. Every moment in an airplane is your chance to be a great.