airtraffic

Author Topic: shorten radio traffic  (Read 14831 times)

Offline masterkeymaster

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shorten radio traffic
« on: June 09, 2013, 03:51:00 PM »
I was talking to a controller and was receiving vectors to an ILS and I noticed that the radio was getting hard to get a word in due to traffic so one time I was giving a heading to turn 090 however instead of repeating 090 I stated east over the radio along with my abbreviated call sign to shorten radio traffic is this ok?



Offline ATCzero

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Re: shorten radio traffic
« Reply #1 on: July 07, 2013, 11:53:43 AM »
Technically you should repeat the exact heading. You could even just say "090 N123" if you wanted to keep it short. Just so the controller is 100% sure. But if they were really busy, that was probably good enough for them at the time.

Offline StuSEL

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Re: shorten radio traffic
« Reply #2 on: July 08, 2013, 08:41:40 PM »
I've heard people say "South" instead of "180," and other directions like you said above. I agree with ATCzero; state the heading. Psychologically, it takes less time to process an exact readback than a synonym. This goes for runway numbers, cardinal headings, etc.

Offline Plane Whisperer

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Re: shorten radio traffic
« Reply #3 on: July 29, 2013, 06:14:34 PM »
I was talking to a controller and was receiving vectors to an ILS and I noticed that the radio was getting hard to get a word in due to traffic so one time I was giving a heading to turn 090 however instead of repeating 090 I stated east over the radio along with my abbreviated call sign to shorten radio traffic is this ok?

No. Please don't do this. I appreciate that you're trying to save time, but two problems:

1. The difference between "south" and "zero niner zero" is two words. If I don't have the ~1 second that takes, I'm not going to give you the instruction anyway. We're accounting for slow and erroneous readbacks (not that we want them to happen, of course).
2. "South" is not the instruction. That could be interpreted as anything between 135 to 225 degrees, maybe more. Especially when vectoring for an approach or for traffic, exact headings are necessary. Generally, cardinal directions are only given when that kind of precision isn't needed.


Thanks for trying to look out for us, but read back the instruction you're given so we're all on the same page.
« Last Edit: November 17, 2013, 11:50:38 PM by Aluminum Showers »

Offline porterjet

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Re: shorten radio traffic
« Reply #4 on: August 09, 2013, 10:33:17 AM »
"North" or "South" is cute but technically not correct. You also don't need to repeat verbatim the entire clearance, just the important stuff.