Short Final

Heard on the tower frequency at a major Southwest hub… Tower: Southwest 972 Position and hold runway 28 Pilot Reply: You’re 90 degrees off … (pause) … Northwest 972 will position and hold, runway 28

The dangers of the double negative… ATC: Did you get your numbers? Airline: [Somewhat garbled] Negative. ATC: Was it “Negative?” Airline: [Again, rather garbled} Affirmative. ATC: So … “negative,” or “affirmative?” Airline: “Affirmative” for “negative…” [The other guy in the cockpit can be heard chuckling in the background.]

Falling on deaf ears… Airline: New York Center, Bizmumble 123, inbound from across the pond. How are you today? Center: Well … I’m working on a holiday. Airline (indignantly): You’re barkin’ up the wrong tree, buddy.

All in a day’s work… I was working at LAN FSS prompting a new student through the flight plan form. When we got to the bottom fo the form I asked the student, “Number on board and color.” Student: One white male.

Courtesy of our sister magazine, IFR: Returning home from the West Coast a few years ago, we landed in Flint Mich. The Midwest had weeks of rain and overcast skies that summer and I got this on departure… “Bonanza Five Four Seven Zero Victor, when vou get on top would you look out to the […]

Identification by dialect… While enjoying a chartered King Air flight, a fellow passenger and I were passing time trying to guess from what part of the country the crew originated. The conversation came to an abrupt end when we noticed one of the landing lights seemed to be shining oddly skyward, Voice In The Cockpit: […]

During 1978 while working ground control, a C-152 from a neighboring airport’s flight school was getting ready to depart. Prior to engine start the pilot called the tower and was informed, “Clearance on request, contact ATIS prior to taxi.” The instruction prompted the following response… Pilot: Cessna 1234 ready to taxi and we contacted Patrick […]

Occasionally heard on the MRI ATIS on slow days (and on dozens of other … ATII … across the country). Advise on contact you have information ECHO…Echo…echo…

Another day, another air show… I was “in the queue” for landing at Oshkosh a couple of years back. As everyone knows, landing aircraft are spoken to but don’t verbally reply to the FAA controllers. ATC to Two ahead of me: Brown Cessna, land on the Orange Spot. Rock your wings if you copy. (The […]

The price of progress… I had been through the area five days before, controllers stated that they were having intermittent reception on my transponder. I later left their area and had no further problems on the flight. Just to be sure, I had a mechanic check it out, and he found no problems. Five days […]