If you know how to talk to a pilot — if you know how to say it the way the FAA wants you to say it — then the pilot is going to understand you. And if something ever does go wrong, you'll never have to explain why you didn't use correct phraseology. That's why I call it what I call it: phraseology is king.

It's one of my all-time favorite subjects, and I want to break it down for you today in a way that actually helps you prepare — not just understand why it matters, but know what to do with it.

Here's something that surprises a lot of students: you would think phraseology would be the same everywhere. And in theory, it should be. The 7110.65 lays out exactly what the FAA wants you to say. But in practice, phraseology varies — from facility to facility, from school to school, from program to program.

The phraseology you're learning at your CTI school is going to be slightly different from what they teach at the Academy. What they teach at the Academy will be slightly different from what they use at Advanced ATC. And when you get to your first facility, it'll shift again. 

I've worked at five different facilities, worked at the Academy, worked at Advanced ATC — and I can tell you from firsthand experience that every single one of them did things slightly differently.

This is actually one of the hardest things I dealt with as an instructor at the Academy. 

Students who came in with prior air traffic experience — especially from the military — sometimes struggled more than students who were starting from zero. Military phraseology is different from FAA phraseology. Different structure, different habits, different muscle memory. And unlearning something is often harder than learning it fresh.

Don't worry about how it differs from where you were before. Don't worry about how it'll differ from where you're going next. Your job right now is to pass — pass your CTI school, pass the Academy, get to your first facility, and get through training there. 

Focus on what's in front of you.

I used to tell my students in Oklahoma City that over the course of my life, I've tried to learn about seven different languages. Spanish, French, Italian, Russian — yes, I actually took Russian in high school — Portuguese, English, and air traffic control. 

And there's a reason I can only speak two of those seven fluently. 

The others just haven't mattered enough, yet.

That framing — air traffic as a language — isn't just a metaphor. It's the most accurate way I know to describe what you're actually doing when you learn phraseology. 

You're not memorizing scripts. You're learning to think and communicate in a different language, one that has its own grammar, its own rhythm, and its own consequences when you get it wrong. And just like any language, the goal isn't to think about what you're saying while you're saying it. 

The goal is fluency. 

You have to get to the point where the phraseology just comes out.

My primary trainer at Brownsville put it to me directly: "you want to say it right every time, and you want to get to the point where you don't have to think about how to say it right. It just comes out right."

Here's why this is so important, and it goes beyond just sounding professional.

When you're in the radar lab at the Academy, it is very easy to tell who has studied and who hasn't. Who knows the phraseology for a point out and who's guessing. Who can give a clearance without hesitating and who can't. 

And as an instructor watching from the other side of that room, I can tell you — the students who have the phraseology down cold have a massive advantage. Not just in how they're perceived, but in how they're actually able to perform.

When phraseology is second nature, your brain gets freed up to think about the things that are harder to automate — traffic flow, separation, the picture. The cognitive load of figuring out what to say is gone, and you can focus on what you're actually supposed to be managing. 

The reverse is also true. 

When phraseology is a struggle, everything else gets harder. You're splitting your mental bandwidth between communication and decision-making at the exact moment you can least afford to. You fall behind, you start guessing, and the whole thing starts to unravel.

Here's something I've seen firsthand that a lot of people don't talk about: good phraseology can lull an evaluator to sleep. And I mean that in the best possible way.

I've been watching a student work a problem, and they sounded so good — so clean, so confident — that I completely missed a separation error they made. It happens. When someone sounds like they know exactly what they're doing, your brain starts to relax. That's human nature.

Start so clean, sound so professional, that they feel like they can relax and just observe. I've seen students come out of evals saying they had a couple of small errors that didn't get caught. That's not luck — that's what good phraseology does.

The opposite is equally true and equally powerful. Bad phraseology at the start of a problem puts that evaluator on full alert for the next 40 to 45 minutes. Their ears perk up. They lean in. They start watching for everything. And now every small mistake gets caught because you've told them — through your communication — that they need to pay close attention.

In non-radar at the Academy, a phraseology error will cost you a fraction of a point. In the radar portion, it'll cost you two points. That doesn't sound like much until you think about it this way.

Imagine you have a stack of 100 one-dollar bills. Someone comes along and takes two. You still have 98 — fine. Then another person takes two. Then another. Then another. After ten of those, you're down to 80 points maximum, and that's assuming you did everything else in the problem correctly.

And here's what I can tell you almost with certainty: if your phraseology isn't spot on, it's rarely the only thing in that problem that's off. 

Weak phraseology and weak performance tend to travel together. So those two-point deductions add up fast, and they add up on top of other errors you may not even realize you're making.

The flip side is that phraseology is one of the few things in air traffic control that is almost entirely within your control before you ever set foot in the radar lab. 

You don't need scenarios to practice it. 

You don't need simulators. 

So how do you build that fluency? 

Here's what I did when I was starting out with very little experience talking to aircraft.

I practiced the phonetic alphabet by reading license plates as I drove to and from the Academy. Every plate became an aircraft. Every car on the road was traffic. If I had someone in the car with me, we'd run point-outs back and forth the entire trip — one of us giving the point-out, the other taking it, then switching. Back and forth, over and over, until it stopped feeling like practice and started feeling automatic.

You can do the same thing. 

The opportunities are everywhere once you start looking for them.

But — and this is critical — it does not help to practice bad phraseology. 

Bad phraseology is as harmful as no phraseology, maybe worse, because it builds the wrong habits into your muscle memory and makes them harder to undo later. 

If you're practicing with classmates, hold each other accountable. Correct each other. Keep the standard high, because the standard you practice to is the standard you'll perform to under pressure.

One more thing I want to touch on, because it ties directly into phraseology: strip marking. 

If phraseology is learning to speak the language of air traffic control, strip marking is learning to write it. 

They're two sides of the same coin, and they have to develop together.

You need to be able to say the right thing and write the right thing simultaneously. That's the reality of working traffic.

The good news is that phraseology and strip marking are, in my view, the easiest things you're going to learn in this career — easier than learning a map, easier than building a mental picture of complex traffic flow. 

They seem overwhelming at first, but they become manageable fast with consistent practice. And once they're solid, they become the foundation that everything else gets built on.

If you can't communicate what you're doing in a way the pilot understands, none of the rest of it matters. 

You can have the perfect plan in your head, the best clearance anyone has ever constructed — and if you can't say it right, the pilot won't understand it, they'll read back with confusion, and now you're twice as busy as you were before.

My first trainer said it to me in a way I've never forgotten: if you sound confident, if you sound professional, that pilot will follow your instructions without question. That's the power of clear, correct communication. 

Pilots trust controllers who sound like they know what they're doing. And when you get busy — really busy — that trust is everything. You cannot have pilots second-guessing your instructions at the exact moment you need them to act immediately.

I had a Seminole on short final with no gear down. I was busy, but I saw it, keyed up, and gave him the correct phraseology. He went around, came back, landed safely, and thanked me. 

In a split-second situation, there's no time to think about how to say something. 

It just has to come out right. 

That's what all the practice is for.

So wherever you are right now — CTI school, preparing for the Academy, already in Oklahoma City — learn the phraseology where you are. 

Master it. 

Get to the point where it comes out without thinking.

Always has been, always will be.