Standard of Aviation English
Without wishing to name call or anything suchlike, I believe that the standard "Cambridge Certificate" English pass required from overseass students is too low a standard, either that, or the teaching of English as a second language is abysmal, at least Victoria.
To all you skygods, tootlling about at FL030 it probably isn't an issue, but it's a source of irritation to me sometimes and I also suspect to ATC and various suburban towers (YMMB).
Now we all stutter and say dumb things when we start out, and the long suffering ATC and Towers put up with us, but it concerned me yesterday listening to Melbourne Radar trying to give instructions to someone and get a clear readback in incredibly accented English. This takes up valuable time on frequency and must increase their workload and costs.
I didn't mind doing an orbit yesterday to clear a student who was tracking for Avalon, at least he had made his call, even if he wasn't going to deviate in the slightest from his chosen track despite the fact that he was slowly overtaking. I have however heard ATC get exasperated to the point where they stated on frequency "I've told you three times to XXXX".
I'm not sure that the old excuse "Well they will learn eventually" is good enough, neither for the student or the rest of the community. For the student, the ability to communicate successfully in an emergency is important for them, and for the rest of us, I'm concerned about the holes in the Swiss cheese lining up, one hole being a toungue tied fellow pilot.
I wonder if it might be possible to develop (if one doesn't already exist) a computer based training package that can take these kids (and perhaps a few of us) through an "Aviation English" course, complete with challenges and responses and the common and not so common scenarios.