Mike-Alpha
Good points on standard R/T phraseology. My experience is, that US controllers are only using standard ICAO as long as everything goes perfect. As soon as something hits the fan though, they will try to "negotiate" it with you. It works if your English is spotless, however maybe, just maybe it should be the other way around.
At the same time, in order to redeem the Chinese pilot everyone seems to forget, that he COMPLETELY screwed up the first two calls. I know aviation is all about expecting certain phases of flight (that's what i teach my students), but ignoring the words Mike-Alpha and substituting it with November... Well... I don't know. Kind of hard to mix up. This could have added to the, already overloaded, controllers frustration. Besides this really was a "No-Danger-But-Oh-So-Annoying" situation. The plane is standing on the ground, blocking everyone's way, and the pilot doesn't understand the question (not so sure, had he been asked to "confirm cleared to the gate" the answer would not have been "logel to tha gate confilm" which makes about as much sense as the whole conversation in the first place).
As i said in the first part, i think US ATC is a nightmare even for born Americans who get in touch with, say SOCAL Approach the first time (although New Yorkers seem less friendly for some reason {SHOCKING!!!}), and rarely use standard phraseology ("Traffic two o'clock, three miles Cessna 172 indicating 6500" "Roger, got'em on the fish-finder").
However things should be improving on both sides. One of the solutions would be to let mainland chinese train in the US. If you can handle this, you can handle anything.
Cheers
Last edited by ChePety; 9th Jul 2007 at 18:57.
Reason: forgot something