Smoking Hole:
"Centre, ABC airborne at YXXX standby for departure"
No worries tool - i'm sure centre's just pissing in anticipation.
Actually, as a controller, this makes sense. Hopefully most of you know that ATC start to initiate SAR if you fail to call a departure ten minutes after you give a taxi call. So, in effect the pilot is saying that "I know it's close to the time you'll start bugging me, I'm still here & alive, just airborne, I'll give you a call in a tick". At least that's what I have seen it used for.
Icarus53:
"Line up and wait RW 16R"
"ABC - Hold at the holding point"
Climb and maintain 5000'
These are all examples of what we are now required to say. I believe the changes were to ensure people knew that yes, you are getting an instruction which usually gets a following one pretty quickly, but this may not be the case this time. Climb to an maintain means you can expect to level off at 5000, whereas climb to 5000 usually means that it's a level peg for my separation proving purposes, but I don't expect you to level off. I'm not saying I'm a fan, but it more of the old arse covering again.....
Cheers,
NFR.