WillowRun 6-3 I have been giving dozens presentations and lectures about R/T standardization to both ATC and Crews when some large international airlines decided to use multinational crews. .There are many accidents where lack of standard phraseology were major contributing factors , if not a direct cause, one of the most used is Avianca 052 in New York in 1990 than ran out of fuel. (interestinglyi n the NTSB report the controller said he would have reacted to MAYDAY but did not assimilate to a "priority" request to a fuel emergency.) . ICAO responded but the most resistant group to this standardisation at the time was the US both FAA and US ALPA. , the argument being half the pilots and half the aircraft of the world were in the US , they did not have an issue domestically with R/T and retraining 100 of thousands of pilots to please the rest of the world was out of the question. Adopting the" line up and wait" after Tenerife in the US took over 20 years , But to their credit he FAA has moved on since that time in a very positive way.
Now back to this accident . The use of Standard phraseology by the crew here would not have changed anything , so it was not a factor. The Controller understood the aircraft was in emergency and reacted appropriately. We could re-open a thread on this R/T standardisation and use of dual languages on the R/T , but that was already debated to death already here before at the beginning of PPruNe...
Last remark for the uneducated in ATC : asking for POBs and Fuel remaining is a must know for the Rescue people. Might sound a nuisance but it is essential to get. .