Ack!

You do not want me around if you’re going to watch a movie or TV show which involves aviation in general or ATC in particular. I do not suffer fools lightly, and I have yet to see competent technical advice in any film about ATC and precious few about aviation. Much if it is so bad as to cause me to get vocal in response, which will ruin it for you if you’re okay with the dramatic license. I’m not.

“What do you mean?” one might ask. Okay, let’s start with an easy one. How many degrees in a circle? Is it possible anyone over the age of 12 doesn’t know the answer (360, if you’re under 12)? I swear by all that is holy that this is true. I once saw a movie with an airplane in it, and the pilot was cleared for takeoff on Runway 37. Ack! Okay, granted the best kept secret in aviation is how runways are numbered (the nearest compass direction rounded to tens of degrees), but please, how much would it cost to call a pilot, any pilot, even a student pilot, and ask them? Incidentally Roddy saw the same movie, and not surprisingly, we’re pretty sure it was an, uh, art film.

While I’ll principally discuss ATC, let me give a couple of movie acks and then we’ll move on. Remember Midway, documenting the eponymous WWII battle? Some of the aircraft returning to the Yorktown, Hornet, or Enterprise, were F6F Hellcats, which didn’t join the fleet until 1943 (any F4U Corsairs shown in the same time period also didn’t join the fleet until 1943). Well, F6Fs aren’t that easy to differentiate from the F4F Wildcats (which were the front line fighter at Midway), particularly if you’re not up on your aircraft recognition. But how about the movie Tora, Tora, Tora? It’s about the attack on Pearl Harbor—1941. In that one you’ll see a fighter crashing into the fantail of a carrier. It’s an F9F Panther, a jet fighter, vintage Korean War, ten years later. Acks all around

Oh, crap—one more movie “ack”. This one’s been around so long there is a large segment of professional communicators and virtually 100% of the entertainment industry that thinks that your last transmission should be “over and out.” Where do I start? Well, ack! for one. “Over” means “I’m done talking—your turn.” “Out” means “I’m done,” period. You might even be going off the air. In strictest terms “over and out” is either meaningless or contradictory. In one sense, it’s like saying “you go ahead and talk, but I’m not listening—na–na–na–na…” In thirty years I never used “out” and only heard another controller use it once, maybe twice. It really has no function in ATC communications. “Over,” on the other hand, is heard every day, but not every transmission. It’s real purpose is to prod someone to respond when there may be some ambiguity as to when you’ve finished talking. Most ATC communications are pretty clear in that regard, though.

All ATC is conducted in UTC, or what was once known as (and frankly, still is), Greenwich Mean Time. While probably not immediately clear, that also implies 24 hour time (or military time, as some people call it), to eliminate any ambiguity of am or pm. That means 3 o’clock is 1500, for example. The 24 hour clock, and to a lesser extent, Zulu time (as UTC and GMT is also sometimes called), became so much a part of my life that every clock or watch I own which has the capability is set to 24 hour time. As a concession to my wife, I keep it on local time, but she’s had to come to terms with dinner being at 1900.

By the way, UTC is the contraction for Coordinated Universal Time. It’s UTC because the French from which it’s derived is universel temps coordonné . It's really hard to find proof of that on the internet, and since I’ve also seen universelle tiempes coordinate I am suspicious that while it’s almost certainly based on a foreign language, and French is usually the language of international standards, it may, instead, be something else. As I thought—after some research, I found thisdiscussion of UTC.

Okay, I recently saw an aviation blog in which the author was trying to convey the phraseology a pilot would be given when instructed to hold. “November 345 Juliet, cleared to PLANO, as published, maintain 70, expect further clearance at 1645 Zulu.” Ack! No one, ever, in the history of ATC has ever said Zulu when giving any kind of time, either to a pilot or another controller. It’s utterly, unequivocally, implied in every case. It’s what the system is based on and there is no alternative which might be confused for it.

Speaking of military time, I’ve heard this so many times I can’t even begin to count them. Someone in a drama will say, “he’s due back at 1600 hours.” Ack! No one who is conversant in 24 hour time ever says “hours.” It’s almost as firmly implied as Zulu is in ATC time.

Often in a movie or TV show you’ll hear a controller give an instruction to a pilot or hear pilots talking to one another and one will say, for example, “roger that.” Ack! Any roger is implicitly a roger that. It is utterly redundant, unprofessional and sounds really stupid. And while we’re on the subject, roger is not a synonym for yes. By definition, roger means, “I have received your transmission and acknowledge for it.” We don’t (didn’t) hear it often in ATC, but I hear it a lot in other services. Ack!

I guess the people who type the closed captioning can’t be technical specialists. Here are a few gaffes they’ve transcribed incorrectly over the years:

• “chalk” instead of “chock” when describing the blocks placed around aircraft wheels
• “clear to land” instead of “cleared to land.” All ATC involves clearances given by controllers—thus, you are cleared (by the controller) to do something. Of course he'll only do that when it’s clear…
• “oh joy” instead of “no joy” which is the response a pilot gives when he hasn’t spotted traffic pointed out to him by a controller. When he does, he'll say “tally ho.”  Seriously.

There were some internal issues, too—poor phraseology in our own house. One of them which used to drive me nuts was when a controller would instruct an airplane to turn to a heading and “join the localizer.” Ack! You have to really be up on ATP phraseology to understand the problem with that one, but mainly, the proper instruction for a localizer (or a radial) is to intercept it. Join is the correct word to use for getting on an airway. I have a wordy proof for that, but you probably would rather skip it, so trust me (hereif you want to read it).

Another one I started hearing in my last few years was when a newbie was vectoring an aircraft, he might say, “turn right, fly heading…” Ack! The proper phraseology is either “fly heading (xxx)” or “turn right heading (xxx)”. Combining the two is incorrect. I think I started hearing some of the foregoing because training wasn’t what it used to be. Trainees didn’t learn procedures and phraseology before starting training—they picked up what they thought they needed in OJT (on the job training). It was what I called learning by legend. The problem with it is when everyone learned the book first, then everyone was singing from the same hymnal. Even if one adopted bad habits and poor phraseology later, it didn’t trickle down several generations and the trainee could recognize poor examples right away because he’d read the book. But after someone’s trainee’s trainee’s trainee got certified, learning all the while by legend…well it was the old pass it on party game all over again, but in a serious venue.

I’m sure some more of these will come to me, and I’ll add them to the list as they do.

Last updated: 02 February 2010