Ok, so this sthread is about poor Mid East RTP, accepted.
But at the risk of thread creep, its not just the mid east, or the 'supposed' third world. There are what I consider, some far more serious RT issues going on in the 'first' world that nobody seems to give a damn about!
I am referring to some major international airports where a large proportion of the RT is not even in English, the internationally common agreed language of aviation. There is nothing worse than being in a peice of terminal airspace, or manoeuvering on a busy aerodrome, and the aircraft around you are communicating with ATC in a completely different language. Maintaining a reasonable situational awareness of what is going on around you is a crucial part of our game, impossible to do when its not done in a common language.
This is a far greater safety issue than the pedantics that are being dicussed in this thread. Granted, the previous posts are correct in that the Mid East RTP mentioned is not perfect, but its implications on safety...negligible maybe?
Don't agree with me? Look at the report on Tenerife, the worst aviation accident to date. One of the significant factors was some of the RTP not in English, ie crews losing SA. More recently, the Italian prang with the MD and Cessna - a runway incursion partially attributed to loss of SA due to non english RTP.
This is going on daily, and even worse its accepted! I think before fingers are pointed at the the finer points, the basics have got to be sorted out. It is unacceptable given the current emphasis on reducing runway incursions......
Athens and CDG come to mind.
Get rid of the mindless patriotism, and play the game. Regulators, have some bollacks to do something about a relevant and proven safety issue.....then we can worry about the virtues of 'charlie charlie' vs 'affirm'.
Last edited by Dixons Cider; 18th Jan 2006 at 05:51.