Author Topic: new canadian phraseology  (Read 13016 times)

Offline Canadian eh

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 51
new canadian phraseology
« on: August 02, 2008, 02:27:09 AM »
some new Canadian phraseology has just been put in place, it's scary and it's going to cause some "deals" real soon. you can mark my words.

we will use this example: BYWQ is 45 NM from dest level at eight thousand. he will enter terminal airspace 35NM from dest and as per a agreement all aircraft will be cleared to 7000' entering terminal airspace. they don't have to be level, just have 7000' as there cleared too alt.
the old way would be "BYWQ, maintain seven thousand, descent at your discretion/pilots discretion". I'd say that's pretty clear that his cleared alt is 7000' and he can descend from 8000' to 7000' whenever he wants.
the 2 options for the new way:
A. which is not so bad but wordy "BYWQ, when ready descend and maintain seven thousand" pretty clear just old habits die hard, hence it's hard to say when you've done it the other way a million times.
B. which is going to cause some deals "BYWQ, when ready descend seven thousand" correct phraseology is to say it just like that without a "to" in between descend and the cleared alt. and we are not required to say "maintain"

all 3 of those clearances mean the pilot can start down at anytime and his cleared alt is 7000'. if you look at the 3rd one though it would be easy for a pilot to think he has to descend 7000'; 8000'-7000'=1000' which is more than likely below a min safe alt. in the situation above if the aircraft is given "BYWQ, descend seven thousand" when he is 40NM out and a read back is received (but the pilot thinks he's cleared to descend 7000' aka1000'), then the aircraft starts descent(say 1000'/min). if the aircraft is now switched to terminals freq and he dials up the wrong freq and has to come back to en route to get the right one or terminal is busy and he can't check in for 2 min... well he's going to blow his alt and theres a good chance there is a plane around him that he may tango with.

even worse is if I'm climbing a guy through him, aka head to head and I'm going to force vertical to happen faster i would now say something like this "BYWQ, traffic 12 o'clock, two zero miles, opposite direction, metro, through seven thousand for one five thousand, descend seven thousand now" I'm thinking I'll split the diff and have the climber through 8500' and BYWQ through 7500' in about a min. BYWQ might think he's taking a "good run" at the climber and i need him to descend 7000' total (aka1000') right away to Miss him.

as always the suits know best about a job they are not trained to do. i control and think it's scary wording, but we will soon find out.



Offline cessna157

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 708
    • facebook
Re: new canadian phraseology
« Reply #1 on: August 02, 2008, 06:45:31 AM »
The "descend 7 thousand," to me, doesn't sound confusing.  As a professional pilot, if I heard that, I would descend to 7 thousand.  Honestly, to me, that just sounds like the controller is being lazy and not saying the entire clearance.  Kind of like New York Approach's custom made clearances.

The "When ready, descend 7 thousand" is what would confuse me.  I have never heard a clearance like that.  And to be honest, I wouldn't know what the controller meant by that.  Pilot's discretion is our standard phraseology and would be understood a lot more.

Offline KSYR-pjr

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1722
Re: new canadian phraseology
« Reply #2 on: August 02, 2008, 06:45:50 AM »
as always the suits know best about a job they are not trained to do. i control and think it's scary wording, but we will soon find out.

Are there any other altitude instructions that are given in feet to make the change, rather than final altitude?  

As a US-based pilot, I would not interpret a "... when ready descend seven thousand" as anything other than a "descend and maintain" only because there are no other instructions in US ATC phraseology that request and altitude change by feet to lose or gain.  In other words, I have been conditioned to hear every number pertaining to altitude as an altitude level.

FWIW...

Offline dave

  • Site Founder
  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4597
    • LiveATC.net
Re: new canadian phraseology
« Reply #3 on: August 02, 2008, 08:15:32 AM »
The "descend 7 thousand," to me, doesn't sound confusing.  As a professional pilot, if I heard that, I would descend to 7 thousand.  Honestly, to me, that just sounds like the controller is being lazy and not saying the entire clearance.  Kind of like New York Approach's custom made clearances.

The "When ready, descend 7 thousand" is what would confuse me.  I have never heard a clearance like that.  And to be honest, I wouldn't know what the controller meant by that.  Pilot's discretion is our standard phraseology and would be understood a lot more.

I would also interpret this as "at pilot's discretion, descend and maintain 7,000."

I listen to New York Approach a lot and have flown through that airspace a bit - can you give an example of a custom made clearance and what you found confusing about it?  Was it a clearance given in more plain English rather than using standard ATC phraseology?  Just curious.

This is a perfect topic for this forum, by the way.  Exactly the kind of thing I always hoped to see discussed here.

Dave

Offline Jason

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1260
  • CFI/CFII
Re: new canadian phraseology
« Reply #4 on: August 02, 2008, 09:03:03 AM »
I can attest to those custom NY clearances:

"Go direct the tapp"
"Descend to 1500 and call the tower 18 57"

Personally, since I fly the airspace quite often, I'm used to and don't mind these non-standard clearances. I understand both just fine.  If I cant, you can bet that I will query the controller, and I have in the past.

I agree with cessna157, "descend seven thousand" to me would be a descent clearance to 7000 feet, no splitting the difference or anything like that.  "When your ready," however, is somewhat confusing. "Pilots discretion" is much easier to follow IMHO.
« Last Edit: August 02, 2008, 09:53:29 AM by Jason »

Offline Canadian eh

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 51
Re: new canadian phraseology
« Reply #5 on: August 03, 2008, 02:31:01 AM »
there is lots of times daily where a lander is going to pass opposite direction over flying traffic at or around the time he wants to start down. when this is the case it's common to tell the lander something like this"OKL you have opposite direction B190 traffic that your going to pass about 60NM from dest, do you wanna start down 2000' now or hold it up til you pass?". if the pilot wants down before the pass I'll start him down with a reach restriction so i don't have to monitor it. but as we all know controllers are lazy. so I'm going to issue a hard alt like 6000' so i don't have to step him down or issue him another descent clearance 10 min later. i used to phrase it like this "OKL maintain 6000', reach fl240 no later than 1210 and balance at PD", or as some guys i work with use to say "OKL maintain 6000', descend 2000' now and remainder at PD". I'm sure you can see the problem that can happen here. i guess the right way to say it now would be one of these 2: A."OKL descend 6000', descend to fl240 now and when ready descend remainder."or; B. "OKL, descend 6000', descend 2000' now and when ready descend remainder". both are pretty confusing.
of "descend and maintain" the "and maintain" part is optional. there is a fine line between lazy are saving time.  saving time means saving workload, here's a easy way to see what i mean. time yourself on how long it takes you to say "and maintain", probably about 1 second. so between a controller saying it and a pilot reading it back it takes 2 seconds. if I'm busy I'll give early descents at PD but since "and maintain" is not required I'll omit it to save time. if i rattle off 4 early descents in row with out the extra verbage I'll save 2 sec/clearance, a total of 8 seconds.  next time your listening to a busy feed, count out loud 8 sec's and you'll see how much time that really is and how much happen in 8 sec's. 8 sec's can be the diff between a guy going under and a guy under complete control.

this might not be so bad for IFR pilots but what about CVFR (controlled VFR), or foreign pilots with weak English?

Offline Scrapper

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 152
Re: new canadian phraseology
« Reply #6 on: August 07, 2008, 08:29:21 PM »
I'm with Canadian eh on this one. Although I'm no expert, I have the advantage of being in the training system right now, so I can include a student's perspective into this one. To me, it makes more sense to use a phraseology that most pilots understand and recognize, and most pilots use "at your discretion" or "pilot's discretion"... "start your descent now and below FL 230 at your discretion" seems pretty straight forward to me, so I'm not sure what the reasoning behind changing it to the new phraseology is... This seems like it's going to cause confusion and say agains and that's really going to tie up the frequencies... in a congested airspace with a lot of sequencing and tail to tail descents, this sounds like it's going to be a nightmare...

When does this start?

I'm also with Dave that in the two years or so that I've been occasionally checking these forums, it's nice to have a discussion about this kind of thing without someone chiming in and getting all pissy that none of us know what we're talking about and should keep our comments to ourselves... finally a topic that we can all discuss at various levels of experience... even new guys like me...

Offline Canadian eh

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 51
Re: new canadian phraseology
« Reply #7 on: August 10, 2008, 03:37:20 PM »
the reasoning behind the new phraseology, the people to be determind that the new lingo is easier for foreign pilots to understand. the lingo is in place now in Canada but we as controllers can't find any info for pilots about it being in place anytime before Oct. of this year.

Offline Scrapper

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 152
Re: new canadian phraseology
« Reply #8 on: August 12, 2008, 03:17:43 PM »
Just heard it applied for the first time yesterday... took some time getting used to it...

Offline mts

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 3
Re: new canadian phraseology
« Reply #9 on: August 13, 2008, 06:25:32 PM »
This is not new phraseology... It's just a little Europeanish  :-)

No one in EU says "and maintain".The standard is :" DLH1865, descend FL 310 ".That's it. I guess it is just about getting used to... "When ready" is very popular there too. The preposition "to" is a no-no because it is confusable with 2.

Anyway I don't see why the change, it is not much different from what they have in Canada now. I really wonder what is the reason for the change? Any incident stats available? Otherwise it doesn't make much sense to me.

BTW do you know that in the UK they say "Pass your message" instead of "go ahead" just because they are afraid that someone will misunderstand it and move the aircraft forward? For me this is a little bit paranoic, but I have to admit that the British have the best phraseology around. I have heard Heathrow director say:

Descend altitude three thousand feet QNH one zero one eight millibars.


Very little chance to do the wrong thing. And just think of it - they are so busy, but they still have the time to say all these words.....




djmodifyd

  • Guest
Re: new canadian phraseology
« Reply #10 on: August 17, 2008, 11:40:13 AM »
this is ICAO slowly coming to place

I can't remember when exactly...but the NAS as we know it will be completely ICAO within 5 years or so.

how about this one:  "Runway23, position and hold"  will soon be..."Runway23, line up and wait"


oh god.....i SO do not want to say that.

Offline Scrapper

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 152
Re: new canadian phraseology
« Reply #11 on: August 29, 2008, 02:55:18 PM »
Line up has been in use in canada for some time now... I didn't know the states weren't doing it yet... seems to work fine here but are there any canadian tower controllers on here who can give us some input?

Offline bcrosby

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 333
    • Fly With Blake
Re: new canadian phraseology
« Reply #12 on: August 29, 2008, 03:59:56 PM »