I posted the avianca accident as a facetious comment although you could read another loss when they ran out of fuel, crashed and burnt because an air traffic did not understand their situation.
An example of bad English was in Dublin when two natives were involved..the tower gave the private chopper a cleared to cross after the rolling traffic which the pilot interpreted as a landing aircraft rolling along the runway rather than the executive jet about to take off which narrowly passed underneath the air taxiing chopper.
I joined what became “Britain’s finest” with a mild Essex accent to be immersed in various local British accents along with public school, fake public school and public school badly faking cockney. My close mate died along with more than 100 other bods when the skipper strayed from standard phraseology along with procedures.
My next job was with the Swiss who had 23% foreigner pilots in the cockpit; the vast majority spoke Swiss German dialects, followed by archaic French, various countries English, German, Dutch and a few others. After a couple of incidents I changed my vocabulary, annunciation and speed of delivery followed by phrasing a question so that it couldn’t be answered with yes or no. Such was my drastic change that a good English mate asked if I had had a stroke.
There were times when I carried out an unusual briefing in two languages - not always successful.
Take advice from others; there are good reasons that most airlines doggedly use English in the cockpit..even when I taught English to winch launch and after 40 years of flying a student managed to do what he wasn’t supposed to do.
ps I haven’t mentioned the French whom many are atrocious at standard English on the RT let alone in the cockpit.
Last edited by blind pew; 2nd April 2025 at 15:06.
Reason: Post script