Remember, CDG had accidents due to language problems. It is a SAFETY problem.
That is not entirely true, if you refer to the accident with the Shorts. I read the accident report and noticed that the crew of the Shorts did not maintain a sterile cockpit.
A had a few discussions about French ATC a few years ago on this board and got nowhere. Most people that claim safety hide the fact that they cannot stand the French using their language. You’ll notice that the non-English ATC argument is mostly directed against the French.
To summarize it and make it brief:
• There are airports out there that use two (or more) different tower frequencies. With real busy airports, like ORD, BOS do you have situational awareness or are you –simply put- at the mercy of the controller?
• With airspace and R/T freq’s getting more and more congested the real solution for airborne traffic avoidance is TCAS.
• You have no aural situational awareness about military traffic if they use UHF.
• If you are concerned about the “foreign” environment, why don’t you learn key phrases in French (or Spanish etc.). By the time you waste all your energy ranting about the “ignorant and poorly-English speaking French”, you would have learned “cleared t/o” or “cleared to land runway xx”.
... but then, who's really ignorant? The person coming to another country and demanding things to be like home, or the other country keeping it's own language and culture?
• Observing other flight decks while jumpseating how much do you really listen to ATC? Most crews on taxi-out are busy with checklists, cabin crew and other SOP related procedures. By the time you reach the departure end of the runway, ground switches you over to tower frequency. Depending on traffic congestion, it make take a few seconds to several minutes until you get your t/o clearance. With minimum delay does a non-English language matter?
• Germany was mentioned: German VFR traffic is still mainly conducted in German. At smaller airports like FMO you get the occasional VFR traffic that communicates in German.
• There’s also a BIG difference between English dialects and accents. Wouldn’t surprise me that if French ATC would just talk English, some people would then complain about
dangerous accents.
You could just accept that the world comes in different colours and cultures (and that because it is different it is not necessarily dangerous!)
