This is a question for any Controllers here, especially non-USA ones. Would you have heard « Understand cleared to land 09 Right, side step for 9 Right United 57 » as a request for confirmation?
Although there's no real discussion of the French / English issue in the BEA report just published (and in so far as there is discussion, it's to say that this was not a pure language issue), I'm interested in whether the Controller did not respond to this message at all becasue she heard it as a read-back, rather than a question. What's clear from BEA is that she was a tad overworked, in an ill-prepared Tower and team, and that she made a choice, at a busy moment, to shift seats and equipment. BEA largely attributes her lack of response to United to those factors, and a little to United's non-standard phraseology. But it's at least possible thet she simply did not understand the English she heard. Hence my question above to Controllers: What would you have thought United was saying (whether or not you approve of what he said)?