And though it focuses the bulk of its 746 pages on whole words and phrases, it does not shortchange those searching for help with acronyms, the shorthand of aviation. From AAR (airport arrival rate) to ZFW (zero-fuel weight), this dictionary can handle just about any aviation-language question you throw at it. Years later, a venerable aviation publishing house-Washington State-based Aviation Supplies and Academics (ASA)-produced its own Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms (compiled and edited by Dale Crane). I had to get my hands on it for my own students. It was two volumes, more than a thousand pages. She told me she’d put together a loose, spiral-bound “dictionary” of aeronautical terms and acronyms. One day, I was speaking with a colleague from the east coast of Florida, Deborah Balter, who taught aspiring pilots for whom English was a second language.
In my research I spent a lot of time combing the appendices of the FAA-sanctioned textbooks of the time, including the Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, Instrument Pilot Handbook and beyond. I was a new flight instructor looking for ways to help my students understand the baffling language of aviation. It wasn’t easy, though, and as I progressed through my ratings and certificates, working my way to my first flight-instructor job, I kept wondering, “Why isn’t all this stuff codified somewhere?” It probably didn’t hurt that I was working my way through college at the time, and my mind was wide-open to all the new information-I envy that “me” today. What I didn’t realize when I learned to fly was that I was also taking on a new language, “aviation speak,” as well. I’ve always been partial to simplicity when attempting to solve life’s biggest challenges, and for me, learning a new language has been one of the toughest I’ve ever undertaken.
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