Originally Posted by
pax britanica
crews who were well used to LHR and spoke good English which was not the norm back then with even AF IB TP and the like having crews whose English was very limited along with the Eastern Europeans
As a flight despatcher at Luton in the 1980's, most of the overseas operators had crews that spoke good English. That was until Balkan Bulgarian operated a weekly TU-154 flight in 1984. I was slightly puzzled dealing with their first flight that the crew complement on the flight deck was FIVE. Two pilots and a flight engineer, yes, but who were the other two? Sky marshals? KGB agents? It became apparent during the turnround that one must have been a navigator of some sort, studying Jeppesen (or the Russian equivalent of) aerodrome/departure charts etc. It gradually dawned on me, after any attempt at communication with the pilots was rebuffed with a grunt and a thumb jabbed in the direction of the 5th guy, that he was the translator. All dialogue was done through him. Whether he handled all communication with ATC as well I will never know. If he did, the short delay translating instructions to the pilots probably wasn't normally a big issue. Until they needed a surveillance radar approach (SRA) to half a mile, that is. Which is what happened one day (Luton had no ILS on RW 08 at that time). Waiting for the aircraft to land, I watched it break cloud at least 200 yards left of track in the course of executing a go-around. Good job the new tower was still 10 years away from being built....