The Controller Would Rather You Asked.
The Controller Would Rather You Asked.
More than 41 percent of certified controllers are working six day weeks, and pilots can hear it on the frequency. So we guess instead of asking. That trade is not the favor it feels like.
The FAA's revised workforce plan calls for 12,563 certified professional controllers. The number actually on position is closer to 10,800. More than 41 percent of them are working ten hour days, six days a week, and congressional briefing materials from earlier this year documented increased loss of separation events and runway incursions at understaffed facilities.
Most pilots read those numbers as a safety story about somebody else's job. I want to offer a second reading, because I think the way pilots are quietly responding to a stretched system is making that system harder to fly in, not easier.
When the frequency gets stacked, most of us get smaller.
The Politeness Problem
Radio anxiety is one of the most common things pilots bring to me, and it is almost never about phraseology. The pilots I work with know the words. What they cannot do in the moment is give themselves permission to take up three seconds of a frequency that sounds like it does not have three seconds to give.
So the workaround happens instead. It is small, it is well intentioned, and it is remarkably consistent from pilot to pilot:
- The clearance was partly unclear, so you read back what you think you heard and wait to find out whether you were right
- You need a repeat, so you guess instead, because asking twice feels like announcing you are the weak link on this frequency
- You accept a clearance you are not comfortable with rather than say the word unable, because unable sounds to you like an admission rather than a report
- You fly further off plan than you meant to, because correcting it would require a transmission you have already decided you are not allowed to make
- You rehearse the call so many times before keying up that by the time you transmit, the situation has changed and the call is now wrong
None of that is a competence problem. Every one of those is a pilot being considerate of a system they can hear is under load, and paying for it with margin they did not have to spend.
A stretched system does not need politer pilots. It needs clearer ones.
Why the Instinct Is Backwards
Here is the part pilots consistently have backwards. Controllers are not annoyed by the repeat. They are annoyed by the guess, because the guess is what generates work later. Nobody in that building would trade a clean “say again” for a readback they now have to go back and verify.
Run the arithmetic and you can see why. “Say again” costs about three seconds. An ambiguous readback that turns into a wrong turn costs a re-vector, a traffic call, a possible go around, and in the worst version an incident report that takes the facility months to work through. The three seconds were never the expensive option. They are the discount.
The fatigue numbers strengthen this rather than softening it. A controller working their sixth ten hour day in a row has less spare capacity to catch your error for you. That is not a reason to transmit less. It is a reason to transmit in a way that requires no interpretation on the other end, and to say so plainly when something does not fit.
What This Looks Like in the Aircraft
The fix is not more phraseology drilling, and it is not a pep talk about confidence. It is a decision made on the ground, before the frequency is busy and before you are the one who has to make it.
Decide now, in your kitchen, what your standard is. Mine is simple: if I cannot repeat it back without editing it, I ask. Not if I am fairly sure. Not if I can probably reconstruct it from context. If I have to edit it, I ask. That rule gets made once, calmly, and then it is not a judgment call at 4,000 feet with three airplanes stacked behind me.
Do the same with unable. Unable is not a confession and it is not a complaint. It is a status report, and it is one of the few words in the language that a controller can act on immediately. Pilots who have said it once and watched nothing bad happen tend to never struggle with it again. The whole problem is the first time.
A Note for Instructors
This habit is not built at 4,000 feet. It is built in the first ten hours, in the pattern, the first time a student says “I didn't catch that” and hears something in their instructor's voice that tells them it cost you.
Students are reading you far more closely than they are reading the ACS. If asking for a repeat gets a sigh, a fast correction, or a hand reaching for the mic, they learn the lesson immediately and they carry it into every flight they take without you. If it gets a neutral “good catch, ask again next time,” that also carries. It is a very small piece of instruction with a very long tail.
Radio anxiety is one of the most common and most fixable things pilots bring to coaching, and it responds fast once you stop treating it as a knowledge gap and start treating it as a permission gap. Sessions are one on one, confidential, and built around the flying you actually do.
Book a confidential call →The staffing numbers will move eventually, and they will move slowly. In the meantime the most useful thing any of us can do for a system running thin is to be easy to understand the first time. That one is available today, and it costs about three seconds.
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