Standard of RT in USA

[WillowRun 6-3]

What's interesting especially here....

What's especially interesting here is how the "clearances" and "readbacks" - if you will (in lieu of some mundanity as 'back and forth') - have left the original query by which this thread was launched somewhere amidst open air spaces, as if looking for Cold Lake RCAF AB (Alberta) when it's gone dark. I mean, question was, with US ATC departing from ICAO standard, should the US file a difference with ICAO, in recognition of the non-standard usages (a lawyer word, for "words or phrases").

There's a fair - and at times hysterically funny - debate about how to evaluate the overall -- what is the sense here, efficacy? safety? projected resilience in the face of anticipated increased traffic volumes? user-friendly-ness to drivers? of atc in different parts of the world (sorry, if using the word "user" in reference to drivers offends any).

But this debate really opens up a window into another important question, imo. Which is: forget ICAO standardization as such. Is there some larger convention (conceptually speaking) about appropriate Air Traffic Control procedures and usages -- call it Standardization 2.0 if you like -- which needs to be looked at? For support, I cite the fact that a thread which began with focus upon non-standard usages by US ATCOs morphed into a more general discourse (at times hysterically funny, granted) about proclivities and bad habits, of atc in various parts of the world (and it also digressed into the actual methods of control, such as (as I understood it anyway) approach clearances fixed at altitudes too high to be optimal for a given distance from the outer marker), and also focused upon contextual or situational factors - such as the volume of air traffic at ORD or in the NYC corridor. The reported incident at the TRACON-Chicago is a great anecdotal illustration of such situational factor. Standard 2.0 needs to account not just for the verbal communication aspect, but the air traffic/airspace management context of a given location, does it not?

I leave for some other day, night, rotation, shift, look-up for Belinda's sister, the question whether the creation of a Standard 2.0 should, or should not, be done within the existing architecture of ICAO. Realize (yup, I do) that whether such a new standard(ization) should be pursued and adopted is a threshold question (as us legal eagles like to call things preliminary and requisite in nature) but trends being what they are, I'll leave it to others, too, to flesh out the scenarios by which the intensity of ATC is certainly going to ramp up, and way up at that, and by ramp, I don't mean the kind upon which the driver does her or his walk-around.