The problem with saying “to” is that you then must say the “altitude” or “flight level” after it, to make sure it doesn’t get heard as “two” followed directly by some number.
Correctly, you don’t put “to” before level, you just say “Descend Level 80”.
Why then bother with descend/climb ? Just saying Level 80 would do.
No that basis, why not just say “80”? Perhaps “Fly 80” and “Turn 80” to distinguish from the heading
In the end, R/T is just English. The objective is standardisation to avoid misunderstandings, not absolute brevity.
Timothy wrote:
“descend to” is the more natural way of saying it, but the correct way is to skip “to” altogether.That’s what we learn in PPL and IR COM (aviation exam and Bristol TK agree) in Sweden.Depends what you mean by “correct”
It’s not what ICAO, EASA, Eurocontrol or the CAA say.
Cobalt wrote:
In the end, R/T is just English. The objective is standardisation to avoid misunderstandings, not absolute brevity.
I think this is very important
Brevity is of course relevant to keep the channel open for all users, but if it leads to misunderstandings you will have a lot of repetition which more than cancels out the brevity. As an inexperienced pilot I prefer superfluous phrases to unclear ones and rather use plain English or German when in doubt.
In practice, the way it works, is standard (“ICAO-English”) phraseology by default, and switch to native language for misunderstandings and “unphraseoligical” stuff. Also, at smaller fields, local language is often used, often with rather non-standard phraseology.
The logical way would be to create a separate system of commands, info clearances and so on, like a computer language, symbolic language or something IMO.
A few years ago I went to a NATS presentation where they said that aviation phraseology is not English. It is a special language of its own, intended to be understood internationally.
The same guy was the one who said (and repeated later) that anybody setting 7600 will be “shot down”.
He has a point, however, if you want to be pedantic about it. There is obviously no “english grammar” requirement. Moreover, other than in the UK, USA or Ireland, you cannot assume conversational ELP on either side even if they appear to speak English well.
LeSving wrote:
Also, at smaller fields, local language is often used, often with rather non-standard phraseology.
Yes, and this can sometimes be very brief. My original homebase of Leer-Papenburg EDWF is in East Frisia. The cliche for the coastal people of Northern Germany is that they don’t talk very much. While that is not universally true, I observed more than once very brief RT conversations in the local dialect, such as:
“Leer, D-EXYZ” – “Moin YZ. 26” – “Jo 26”
You have here the initial call from an inbound aircraft, the greeting from the Flugleiter, the landing direction and the readback of said direction all in one short package 
The local greeting of Moin can universally be used in RT (and is even at much bigger, less coastal airports, such as Hannover) while “Jo”, a dialect variant if standard German “ja”, can universally serve as confirmation like “affirm”.
Don’t be afraid, they can also speak pretty good English and perfect Standard German for any foreigners or South Germans respectively
To my earlier point about altitude callouts – you’ll often here in the US space ATC do something like this:
“N171AT, you’re cleared to One Six Thousand Feet, that’s sixteen thousand feet, and join V189”
They’ll often clarify their altitude clearance by doing it in “plain language” right after (obviously because it gets messed up and misunderstood so many times that they preemptively give it this way). I literally hear this all the time. Which then begs the question (like I was saying earlier), why not give it in “plain language” to start with? Scrap the whole Numbers-Before-The-Thousand phraseology completely. Our brains are not set up for it.
