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The radio communications between ATC and pilots in North America is NOT the same as the standard ICAO recommended phraseology.
It cannot be. The busy terminal airspaces where I also flew scheduled line flights such as New York, Boston, Toronto, Seattle, and others could NOT handle the enormous volume of traffic separated by a mere 120 seconds on multi parallel runway airports in close proximity if they strictly adhered to the rigid ICAO phraseology book.
 Despite many technological advances the limitation of the two-way radio remains: only ONE party can speak at a time.
However the volume of air traffic is ever growing, which created a pressing need to simplify, and expedite radio communications.
Therefore a natural evolution has been taking place in North America which is possible due to the fact that all ATC Controllers, and most pilots are native English speakers.
The result is not merely the fastest spoken English you will find anywhere, but also a baffling use of common English terms in many situations.
This rapid-fire challenge and response of non-standard phraseology also leaves a few non-native English speaking pilots' comprehension far behind. Such crews must be given extra airspace ahead and behind them slowing down traffic. In some cases pilots were even unable to push back from the gate at busy airports, delaying there for hours. Even crashes and midair collisions were attributed to extreme cases of miscommunication.
Although a vital issue, there is no communications course, no textbook to learn speaking effectively in this environment. It is simply learned on the job by the bewildered new commercial pilot entering the airline environment.
Japanese airline pilots are also non-native English speakers, and it is helping them learn the subtleties of this communications that I had in mind creating "Professional Pilot Communications".
And I may well be the only such person that can say is most qualified to tackle this project, as am not only an ex airline captain with command experience at two airlines on two different transport jets, holding 5 transport category type ratings, MOT and FAA ATP plus JCAB Commercial certificates, but I am also bilingual, an experienced language teacher, recognized interpreter, and writer.
I have personally recorded, selected, and organized the content of "Professional Pilot Communications" for maximizing the benefit the student would gain.
I was also active during the translation process, and narration making sure that correct meaning and nuances were accurately captured. For example I encouraged my team to abandon the reflex-like use of katakana in favor of using traditional Japanese terms to convey the meaning accurately above all, since I felt that my listeners' possibly misunderstood comprehension of an aviation term in katakana English would only spiral them further into confusion.
The tapes are unique in that they take you to three busy airports, Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland, giving a taste of the various differences in accent, style, and procedures. Yet you are never left wondering where the tape took you: clear color-coded illustrations take you by the hand every step of the way.
Lastly I realize that that the audiotapes of "Professional Pilot Communications" are an outgoing media type, with limited useful life. However its content is too valuable to lose due to rewinding. Therefore please make digital recording for your own use, so you can thoroughly review the content in random-access convenience.
Captain Janos Miko (aka, Captain Bene)
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