They actually speak Mandarin in PEK so Cantonese will be of little use. Their Engrish however, is reasonably good and the ATC fairly good as well. The problem highlighted stemmed not just from their failure to apply a temperature correction, but also as a result of the new procedures introduced a couple of months ago. Everyone is getting to grips with them and our incident may just have highlighted a problem which needs ironing out.
But be careful of those 18 procedures. They take you close to some fairly high ground.
