A few hours ago I watched CNN out of boredom. They ran a story about Chinese pilots and their sub-performance regarding the English language.
They aired an example from JFK where the pilots of an Air China flight completely failed to understand what ATC told them.
The clip ends with the controller saying “Nobody seems to speak English here today”.
Later they interviewed a Chinese pilot who just passed the “new” English exam. They had subtitles for that one.
They presented some statistics that there are some 8000 Chinese pilots of whom approximately 600 had passed the English test. No doubt some Chinese pilots fly solely domestic flights but anyway.
I’m sure that a lot of discussions can be made about what level of English that is actually required to operate internationally and if passing these tests will guarantee an appropriate knowledge. I’ll let someone else start those threads.
My question is this;
Isn’t it a requirement, and has been for many years, to take an ICAO test to get your RT license in English?
I know I had to.
Here is the link to the CNN
story
Regards
Knold