Please forgive me if this was previously posted on the boards. It was forwarded to me. I know it's dated 24/07/01, but this issue needs to be brought out into the open, and the French must comply!!!!!
FRENCH
TUESDAY JULY 24 2001
Pilot killed after message confusion
BY BEN WEBSTER, TRANSPORT CORRESPONDENT
FRENCH accident investigators have called on their own country to accept English as the sole universal language of aviation after the death of a British pilot who was confused by radio messages.
Jon Andrew, the co-pilot, died when the wing of a passenger jet travelling at 170mph ripped through the cockpit of his cargo plane on the runway at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. The captain, Gary Grant, who was sitting beside him, was seriously injured.
The British pilots failed to understand an air traffic controller who, speaking in French, cleared the other plane for take-off on the same runway. Mr Andrew strayed on to the runway at another entry point in his Streamline turboprop, not realising that an Air Liberté jet carrying 155 Spanish football fans was speeding towards him.
The incident in May last year came within a split-second of being a major disaster. The Air Liberté pilot saw the Luton-bound British plane seconds before impact and aborted take-off.
Unlike most other European countries, France has refused to switch to using English exclusively in communications between controllers and pilots. Only a month before the accident, Air France had suspended plans to make English obligatory at its Paris hub after fierce opposition from pilots and politicians.
British pilots have frequently complained that the French practice of using both languages compromises safety.
The Bureau Enquêtes-Accidents (BEA), France’s accident investigation body, said that the British crew’s inability to understand the instruction in French had helped to cause the accident. The BEA recommended that the French civil aviation authority, the DGAC, should consider using only English for air traffic control at its major airports.
Cockpit recorders revealed that the Paris controller who used French to tell the Air Liberté jet to take off switched to English to tell the British crew to line up and wait as “number two”. The controller thought the planes were on the same entry point, but they were at different slipways and neither could see the other until seconds before the collision.The BEA said that the British captain was clearly confused because he can be heard asking his co-pilot twice: “Where is number one (the aircraft cleared to take off first).” If he had understood French he would probably have realised that an Air Liberté plane had just been told to take off from the same runway.
A DGAC spokesman said: “The law says that the French administration must speak in French and there is no obligation to use English by air traffic controllers in France. They can use French with French pilots and, of course, English with international pilots who do not speak French.” He said the BEA recommendation would be considered but it was impossible to say when France might be ready to act on it.
Mr Andrew’s widow, Karen, from Northamptonshire, said: “I would welcome any steps that prevent this from happening again.” She said that her husband, who had sold his business to fulfil his ambition to become a pilot, had not understood French.
Under guidelines set down by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), English is recommended as the common language of aviation. Countries are allowed to opt out and use their native language with their pilots if they consider it safe. France and Russia are among a handful of countries who take advantage of the lack of a binding regulation enforcing the use of English.
FRENCH