Glossary
The phrases this course holds you to, and the forms it teaches you to hear as wrong.
Two lists. The first is the language: 34 phrases, each with one meaning. The second is 12 forms you will hear constantly and should be able to name as departures.
This page is the authority for the standard phraseology criterion on the readback drillsand for step two of the method inweek 11 — name the standard form, or admit you do not have one.
It is also the list that spec/phraseology.test.ts checks the site's own transmissions against, so a transmission printed anywhere here as a model cannot contain a form from the second table. That check reads this page's source data, not a copy of it.
The phrases
| Phrase | Means | Week |
|---|---|---|
ACKNOWLEDGE | Let me know that you have received and understood this message. | 3 |
AFFIRM | Yes.Not `AFFIRMATIVE`, which was shortened precisely because a clipped version has been heard as its own opposite. | 3 |
APPROVED | Permission for the proposed action is granted. | — |
BREAK | I hereby indicate the separation between portions of the message. | — |
BREAK BREAK | I hereby indicate the separation between messages transmitted to different aircraft in a busy environment. | — |
CANCEL | Annul the previously transmitted clearance. | 4 |
CHECK | Examine a system or procedure.No answer is normally expected. | — |
CLEARED | Authorised to proceed under the conditions specified.A clearance, not an instruction. Week 6 is about what happens when the difference does not survive the channel. | 6 |
CONFIRM | Is this your understanding? — or — confirm you have received this message. | — |
CONTACT | Establish radio contact with the named station. | — |
CORRECT | True, or accurate. | — |
CORRECTION | An error has been made in this transmission. The correct version is the following.Stopping a readback partway to correct it counts in your favour in the frequency check. | 12 |
DISREGARD | Consider that transmission as not sent. | — |
HOW DO YOU READ | What is the readability of my transmission? | 9 |
I SAY AGAIN | I repeat, for clarity or emphasis.Distinct from `SAY AGAIN`, which is a request to the other station. | 4 |
LINE UP AND WAIT | Enter the runway and hold, awaiting take-off clearance.The ICAO form. Not `POSITION AND HOLD`. | 4 |
MAINTAIN | Continue in accordance with the condition specified. | — |
MAYDAY | Distress. Grave and imminent danger, immediate assistance required. Spoken three times.Week 7's accident turns on a crew who had this available and did not use it. | 7 |
MONITOR | Listen out on the specified frequency. | — |
NEGATIVE | No — or — permission is not granted — or — that is not correct — or — not capable. | — |
OUT | This exchange is ended and no response is expected.Mutually exclusive with `OVER`. See `OVER AND OUT` in the deviations below. | 7 |
OVER | My transmission is ended and I expect a response from you. | 7 |
PAN-PAN | Urgency. A situation concerning safety that does not require immediate assistance. Spoken three times. | 8 |
READ BACK | Repeat all, or the specified part, of this message back to me exactly as received.The readback is a test, and a test only works if it can fail. Paraphrasing throws the test away. | 3 |
RECLEARED | A change has been made to your last clearance. | — |
REPORT | Pass me the following information. | — |
REQUEST | I should like to know, or I wish to obtain. | — |
ROGER | I have received all of your last transmission.It means received. It does not mean yes, and it is not a readback. This is the single most common error in the course. | 3 |
SAY AGAIN | Repeat all, or the following part, of your last transmission.The most useful two words in the language, because they are cheap. Week 12 argues that this is the transferable design principle. | 1 |
SPEAK SLOWER | Reduce your rate of speech. | 9 |
STANDBY | Wait and I will call you. | — |
UNABLE | I cannot comply with your request, instruction or clearance.Using it when it is true counts in your favour. Accepting something you cannot do does not. | 12 |
WILCO | I understand your message and will comply with it. | 3 |
WORDS TWICE | As a request: communication is difficult, send every word twice. As information: every word in this message will be sent twice. | 9 |
The forms this course teaches you to hear as wrong
None of these is a mistake in English. Every one of them is fluent, and most of them are friendly — which is week 7's whole argument. Fluency is not compliance.
| Form | Say instead | Why it matters | Week |
|---|---|---|---|
OK / OKAY | AFFIRM, ROGER, or a readback — whichever was actually owed | It has no defined meaning, so it is heard as agreement to whatever the other station believed it had said. At Tenerife it arrived first and did exactly that. | 5 |
at takeoff | a standard position report, with DEPARTURE if the phase must be named | Ambiguous between positioned at the takeoff point and commencing takeoff. Both readings are grammatical and both are things an aircraft can be. | 4 |
stand by for takeoff | STANDBY, with no mention of the reserved word | Puts the reserved word into a transmission that is neither a clearance nor a prohibition. Partly stepped on, in fog, this reached a crew already committed to going. | 5 |
position and hold | LINE UP AND WAIT | A legacy North American form. Hold is doing too many jobs, and a clearance to enter a runway should not share vocabulary with an instruction to stop. | 4 |
affirmative | AFFIRM | Shortened deliberately: a clipped affirmative has been heard as its own opposite through a degraded channel. | 7 |
over and out | OUT | A contradiction. OVER hands the frequency back; OUT ends the exchange. The phrase survives from film, not from aviation. | 7 |
roger that | ROGER | Padding on a channel where seconds are the scarce resource, and it encourages ROGER to be heard as an answer rather than a receipt. | 7 |
with you | a full check-in: callsign, level, and what you want | Not a check-in. It tells the controller nothing they need and occupies the frequency while doing it. | 7 |
any traffic please advise | nothing — the phrase has no standard equivalent because it should not be said | It invites simultaneous transmissions from every station on frequency, which is week 1's failure mode requested on purpose. | 7 |
compound numbers | digit by digit — ONE THREE THOUSAND | Place value is exactly the redundancy the channel eats. Thirteen and thirty survive noise far less well than one three. | 6 |
descend to / climb to | DESCEND or CLIMB with no preposition | To is homophonous with two. `descend to four thousand` has been heard as `descend two four thousand`. | 6 |
ROGER in place of a readback | read the clearance back in full | ROGER acknowledges receipt. It does not expose what was understood, so it throws away the only test the loop has. | 3 |
What this list cannot tell you
The second table is a blocklist, and that is a real limit rather than a rough edge. A transmission contains callsigns, place names, levels and squawks that no glossary could enumerate, so this list can prove a known error is present and can never prove a transmission is fully standard. The check that reads it is named for what it actually does.
Which means: finding nothing here does not make a transmission correct. It makes it not wrong in any of the 12 ways this course has taught you. Week 11's method exists because the remaining judgement is yours.