Air India and "confirm"
 

Does anyone else find it absolutely routine for Air India pilots to say "confirm?" at the end of readbacks?

Or is it just me, confirm?

ferris, you are asking a question, confirm? (smiley face with wobbling head)It's a gauranteed response.I now phrase "....track direct PASOV" to the AIC pilots "....track direct PASOV, I say again d..i..r..e..c..t PASOV, yes that's correct d..i..r..e..c..t PASOV, direct PASOV is confirmed"

During my days in Delhi, had a co-pilot who did the same, I asked him to stop this behaviour and he promptly reported me to the DGCA. Long story short, had to attend a meeting and explain myself. Never did hear from them after that and solved the problem by getting a new co-pilot.:E

Gosh Ferris, I bet this 'Term' NEVER ends......You are right that the majority of this operator's pilot have this on the tip of their tongue.....so rest assured it's not only you;)

At times they give a good readback to be concluded by "CONFIRM" 90% of the time...,,,, or else going on stand after landing, advising you that they are on stand....

I do not know what their sop's are, but still I too ignore them when the latter is transmitted....

We as ATC are 'Lucky' not to have Speakers/Headphones coupled with a Screen, because we would surely see n' hear from a Wobbling Head..:ooh::ooh::ooh:

Confirm ferris is back.
 

First of all, welcome back ferris.

Air India is probably the least annoying of the three Indian carriers for this. I find AXB Express India and Indair (IAC) to be even bigger culprits to the extent that I have heard controllers ask the pilots if it was company policy to ask this.

If any Indian pilots are reading this, please don't confuse this thread with the occasional request to confirm a clearance. I believe ferris is referring to, what appears to be, the automatic reply to "confirm" every clearance.

It is very annoying and often we do not have time for it.

Irritates the living daylights out of me. And while we`re at it...how about the "rolling" as they start take off....???? or...after airborne..."confirm left turn" ????? you read it back in the clearance.....or don`t you make notes...????:ugh:

Overhead on the radio some time ago:

ATC: Air India 069, confirm you level passing

Air India: Ah, passing 10,000 feet, but for you we make it 8'000 feet.

I am so fed up with it but I have an answer to it, I don't confirm! If they really missed it they will genuinly ask me again. Indian Airlines is one of the worst for it, when I cracked the **ts with one who had requested confirmation for every instrtuction I bluntly asked the pilot if he was confirming out of habit or whether he genuinly missed it, the skipper apologized! :hmm:

I fly for netjets, and we have an SOP that requires the pilot to respond with " confirm " if the other pilot is off ATC comms getting weather etc. This was introduced in an attempt to try and reduce our contribuation to level busts.

This needs to be stopped, then. It's just too busy to be issuing instructions twice.
Your correct readback is all the confirmation required on the R/T. If you need some way of confirming between the two pilots in the cockpit, then using ATC for that is going to get a lot of people off-side.

Has anyone experienced netjets doing it?

I think you will find that some other (airline) operators stipulate that if the other pilot is not on ATC when a clearance is readback then the clearance must be verified when said pilot returns to the ATC freq, so it's not just Netjets.

The high risk area, of course, is altitude bust during climb and descent. In an ideal world both pilots would be on ATC at all times during climb and descent. However it is sometimes necessary to copy the long and sometimes verbose ATIS and/or copy other wx info during these phases of flight.

If some of the ATIS freqs were better frequency protected this situation would not arise so often. The one that springs to mind is the EMA ATIS which is blasted out by (I think) CDG until you are about 70 miles out!

you can say that again(confirm)
 

yep,its for sure the indian airline (thing) im almost convinsed that its maybe a company procdure?:ugh:
u even sometimes get a classic like to heads shaking in the cockpit with the captin confirming once and then the co-pilot doing the same?!
i think they are just to desprate not to do any mistake or else they will be thrown to the street and 1000000 are waiting to take their place,yes i get very upset like you guys,but i tell you what it takes alot to upset them,they always apolgize and ask forgivness,coz of the reson i mentioned above,but again every airline has it classic sh:mad:t
thats a fact,

This I can go with. However, with above mentioned lot you would think the other pilot is back in first class. You can only get the weather so many times.

This is a nasty habit, that along with various pilots wishing each other 'good morning' etc means that Indian ATC has almost twice as much chat as it needs. It is sometimes difficult to communicate with ATC units because of the sheer volume of 'chat' on the frequency. Hopefully in the future, CPDLC might help reduce this. I suppose it would be asking too much for the Indian authorities to invest in ADS-B -they really need it sooner rather than later.

I suppose it better than them getting it wrong, but sometimes you can notice these things only to realise that its just a particular crew or controller that regularly as a habbit of it.

I agree that too much "Chat" on the RT can be bad sometimes, leading to confusion or just pure frequency loading, however somtimes being that bit more human can help get the message across, or just create a more functional response. A plain Negative, can result in a non helpful response. Just like the comment about noticing someone saying "Confirm" how many other personality or voice traits do you often notice or comment on about a pilot or controller and form an opinion about?

It is also a problem with some controllers. I was working out of an airport in Algeria and the guy in the tower would ask me to confirm everything, I assumed he actually wanted me to so had to say everything twice. Unambiguous stuff, request start, request taxi etc. I was also asked to report parking every time after being cleared to stand, usually it was just me on the pan. One airport asked for me to confirm my position about every 1-2 minutes once I was within about 15 miles of the field, the boss had words with them as sometimes this would be in really ****ty weather but it didn't help. It was non radar but I was usually the only aircraft. I have never flown in India but if the practices are in anyway similar I can understand how it may be a vicious circle of poor radio practices.

The one I like is "Affirm-Confirm"...I get a headache from some of the seriously repetitious affirmation of ATC readbacks, including any wind readouts on short final...for example: cleared to land on rwy 27, wind is 250 at 7 knots..the read back includes the wind...why? Is it how the student is taught?

yes observed controllers do this repition also though, a/c checks in on frequency stating current atis letter, and controller goes into autopilot and speals out the atis letter again!!!

RadarRambler:
Pilot checks in and gives the letter of the ATIS HE copied. Controller (in autopilot) speals (sic) the CURRENT ATIS letter.

Crews may listen to the ATIS some way out, which means its out of date when they check in.

People on here keep saying that it is done to avoid level busts, or that its better than them getting it wrong. Saying confirm at the end of each readback won't stop either from happening. The ATCOs silence is their confirmation that they got it right, and they need to be taught that. It is my job as an ATCO to listen to their readback. It is my job to correct any errors they have made in their readback.

For that reason I ignore the confirm at the end of the readback if the readback is correct and I find 90% of the pilots don't push the issue and if they do I tell them that by me not correcting them, confirms to them that they were correct in their readback. I know trying to change this part of the world one pilot at a time is probably a waste of time but you gotta at least try.:ok:

P.S I posted a thread on the Indian pilot forum on here and they all said they do it for a multitude of reasons, the main reason being a lack of confidence in themselves, whether due to language or culture.