I don't have the actual transcript of the Dan Air accident.. my understanding is from the references to the crash that the controller ( who was under a number of different pressures...professionally and domestically )..issued an instruction for the a/c to take up the hold on arrival over a particular beacon...unfortunately the wording was so poorly phrased the crew understood it to mean a turn to the left and take up a heading ....
Look at it it logically... even if there had not been a single accident resulting from non use or poor use of the designated language ... and it's very clear that there have been...should we wait until we have some body parts to bury before dealing with the problem ?..I, along with my technician and the passengers and crew of a Fokker 100 escaped death by seconds for no better reason than a cloud was no bigger than it was....is that an acceptable risk ?
Rananin... has no problem flying across France ( Why oh why do we keep hearing about France..)... Personally I always feel uncomfortable when tracking toward a VOR and hearing in a foreign language a clearence to another aircraft which includes the VOR ident but I have no idea on what the clearence involves or of the ETA of the other a/c... if you don't feel uncomfortable in those circumstances then I would quetion your qualification to be at the controls of a public transport a/c.
As I mentioned before I do speak some Spanish and some French.. the problem is that when ATC is using the ūlocal language with a native speaking pilot the speech is generally quite rapid and not easily understood by non native speakers.