Originally Posted by
First_Principal
Full marks to Air France for persisting in the face of extremely indifferent ATC, er, GTC 👏
While there may have been some minor difficulties with accent I didn't have any issue understanding AF the first time, let alone the further multiple times they tried to explain.
Once Ground got it (or did they?!) I was very surprised they asked AF to find a telephone and call the Tower, that doesn't seem reasonable to me - at least not in the first instance?
The ground controller should have contacted the Tower immediately, does not need to be a long conversation, simply advise Tower, ITA is to return to the terminal due to damage. Needless to say do you really want to be half way across the Atlantic with bells and whistles going off?
I think the language from ATC was poor, seemed to be more questioning the ITA crew vs telling. Naturally if the ITA crew felt nothing, and no red flags up front, false alarm mindset comes to mind.