Ooops. Sorry to launch a home grown Indian ATC / RT fact into the debate:
ATC asks pilot to `shut up', triggers mid-air spat - Times Of India
From leaving Yangon ATC till hitting the US controller at the Afghan border, I ensure the crew is at attention and scanning TCAS vigilantly. Non standard RT is but the cusp. "I am telling you......!!!" shrieks over the radio all too often. Have heard it all too often coming into Mumbai & Delhi of a near panicked controller untrained & in standards and required RT, not to mention procedures.
French ATC? Not the best due their insistence on speaking French to French aircraft reduces situational awareness immensely. Koreans? Good luck daring to ask them to "say again" as their arrogance at the perceived challenge to their believed superiority..... China? Up there with France but they will control and will reply, as opposed to Indian ATC at times.
And America? No badges of honor to throw there. "Check'in witch-ya on twenty-one nine...!". Give me a break! And the absolute misuse of the term "heavy" is sad.
Indian ATC is the worse in my opinion. Like the general standards all over. The ability is there but the backbone is made of jelly. It lets down so many dedicated and passionate airman to believe that those standards are OK.
Poor RT and standards have lead to far too many accidents. Non standard RT was a huge contributor to Tenerife. We all say in the annual CRM briefings from the crashes & exercises we watch & discuss of how we'd never do that, yet the standards do not improve, no one refers to Doc 4444 for the correct RT, etc... You all go to work with a box ticked but willing to repeat the same garble that we thought was in the category of "I'd never do that" in the classroom the day before.
Doc 4444. Read it. "Professional" is what professional does. How can we know what the real standards are let alone comment on them when an overwhelming majority have never read the correct standards anyway.
PS: polite greetings are not standard RT. In busy FIRs and airports the attempt at being nice actually
detract from safety.