Hi John Tullarmarine, yes, your question about QNH cross checking already queried by me; post #5
And seemingly not performed by this crew. With horrible weather and the wipers going on fast, it would have been difficult to hear ATC clearly, hence it is very important to cross-check such things.
Regarding having the aircraft technology warn us about incorrect QNH. Yes, a possibility, but as above, we already have a proven way of cross-checking and double-checking the QNH, that has worked for many years. I am a fan of technology, but also believe that we should retain some element of pilot competence and error checking, with the pilots having a 3D model of their flight situation in their minds.
Re language and saying numbers digit by digit: That is so non-English speakers can hear standard English phrases and understand them, particularly when transmitted across an analogue voice radio link, which is subject to distortion, fading, noise etc. American ATC for example often say 'runway three' instead of 'runway zero three', and make other verbal short cuts. These are understood by local American pilots, but not necessarily by non-local, non-American pilots, whose first language is not English/American. Hence my question about how French ATC speak QNH in French. It is many years since I regularly flew in and out of CDG, and even when I did, my brain would not have listened closely to instructions given to others in French, so I don't know if ATC use digit by digit for QNH, or the short cut of 'mille un' etc. Having to say 'unité' instead of 'un' takes longer, at three syllables vs one, so 1011 spoken digit by digit in French would take a long time and at a very busy airfield such as CDG, having to say that over and over again; it must be very tempting to abbreviate. This in turn, might have caused confusion in the ATC's mind when they translated for the English speaking pilots.
Someone asked if anyone had ever corrected incorrect transmissions given to others. Yes, I did once, in the London TMA. It was busy - always is, but REALLY busy - and I picked up that another aircraft had responded to our descent clearance. I managed to tell ATC which aircraft had taken our clearance, and that we were maintaining (whatever) until we received further instructions. ATC were very grateful; as were we, and I am sure the other aircraft were too. Could have been very messy.
Another occasion, on our initial descent in Mexican airspace, ATC told us the QNH was '992'. This sounded very low to us and it didn't cross-check, so we queried it several times, without satisfactory resolution - the guy kept saying '992'. We were luckily in very empty skies with nothing around us, and not near the ground, so we continued cautiously with very heightened monitoring until we were handed over to the next controller. We worked out that the first guy was saying '2992', i.e. 29.92 mm/hg; equivalent to 1013 millibars, but he was saying it so quickly and cutting off the first '2' then emphasising the '....9 9 2' part, so the first '2' could barely be detected, and it sounded like a millibar QNH. Had the first controller said 'decimal' as he should have, we would have heard '....9 decimal 92' and would have realised the correct setting.
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