It’s summer, we are all flying places on vacation, wouldn’t it be nice to understand the coded language that flight crews use?
I found this article on MSN.com
Airline pilot reveals the meanings of 11 code words passengers don’t understand
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For most of us, flying is still an inherently mysterious activity.
To shed some light on the world of commercial air travel, Business Insider turned to Patrick Smith, an author and airline pilot, for some answers.
Smith, who is the author of Cockpit Confidential, created a glossary of commonly misunderstood airline jargon that can be found on website, Ask the Pilot.
According to Smith, some of the terminology is highly technology with others are quite humorous and even a bit absurd.
Here are a selection of these entries.
ALL-CALL
Used in a sample sentence: “Flight attendants, doors to arrival, crosscheck and all-call.”
Definition: According to Smith, all-call is usually part of the door arming/disarming procedure. “This is a request that each flight attendant report via intercom from his or her station – a sort of flight attendant conference call,” he wrote.
HOLDING PATTERN
Definition: “A racetrack-shaped course flown during weather or traffic delays,” Smith wrote. “Published holding patterns are depicted on aeronautical charts, but one can be improvised almost anywhere.”
GROUND STOP
Used in a sample sentence: “Sorry folks, but there’s a ground stop on all flights headed south from here.”
Definition: “The point when departures to one or more destinations are curtailed by air traffic control; usually due to a traffic backlog,” Smith wrote.
AIR POCKET
Definition: A colloquial term for a jolt of turbulence.
EQUIPMENT
Used in a sample sentence: “Due to an equipment change, departure for Heathrow is delayed three hours.”
Definition: The airplane. “Is there not something strange about the refusal to call the focal object of the entire industry by its real name?” Smith wrote.
SLIDE © Etihad
DIRECT FLIGHT
Definition: Whether or not a flight is “direct” has nothing to do with how many stops it makes on the way to the destination. Instead, a direct flight is defined as a routing where the flight number does not change.
“This is a carryover from the days when flights between major cities routinely made intermediate stops, sometimes several of them,” Smith wrote.
A flight that doesn’t make any stops is a non-stop flight.
THE RAMP
Used in a sample sentence: “We’re sorry, your suitcase was crushed by a 747 out on the ramp.”
Definition: The ramp is the area closest to the terminal where planes and vehicles are active such as the aircraft parking zones.
Again, this is a relic from the early days of aviation. “In the early days of aviation, many aircraft were amphibious seaplanes or floatplanes. If a plane wasn’t flying, it was either in the water or it was ‘on the ramp,'” Smith wrote.
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This is me back again. Have you flown Etihad Airways yet? I am dying to fly them but haven’t had the opportunity yet. Everyone I know who has flown them, even in coach, says that it is absolute luxury!
If you have flown with Etihad please leave me a comment below, and tell me about your experience!
