At this point it's basically historical/a mild hazing ritual. Everyone involved in aviation knows how to read this gibberish, and the next generation damn well

At this point it's basically historical/a mild hazing ritual. Everyone involved in aviation knows how to read this gibberish, and the next generation damn well better do the same! Back in the day, it made sense. Say, back in the 60s, these messages were sent over a teletype at maybe 75 baud or less, roughly 10 characters per second. Now the Telex network was billed differently, but by comparison, at the time, domestic long distance rates could be over $1 per minute during the day, so it was on the order of 600 characters/$1. All the abbreviations probably reduce the data transmission by 80-90% over a fully spelled out transmission. For things like hourly weather reports from every major airport, the abbreviations probably saved $50/hr or more on Telex charges every hour every day at major airports receiving them. That's not to mention the lower latency from getting weather reports sooner or not needing to install more Telex machines to keep up.