You seem to imply that we went back to french because pilots were not good enough in english.
Allow me to correct you: We reverted back to french because of the uproar the CDG ATC made at this new "procedure"...
Hello, crjo,
I didn't imply anything. I really don't know why they came back to French. CDG ATCos seem to say it's because of AFR pilots, pilots say it's ATCo's fault...
I've never worked in CDG and I don't exactly remember the reports.
There could be really good reasons.
Working in an ACC, I wouldn't mind speaking English with every pilot, let's say over FL 290 or so.
I'm more or less able to argue on the freq in English, despite my "poor" official level 4 (I could be level 10, my official score would still be 4 in France, in order to validate it every other 3 years, as ICOA recommands), but as long as I can choose, I'll argue in French.
So, the one who turns is the French speaking pilot.(joke !)
If French pilots had to speak English, I'd rather put my trust in English pilots, so the English speaking pilot would be the one who turns.(joke again!)
I don't kwow what's the best. And I don't think a pilot can understand AND anticipate a global situation on a sector, whatever the language.
e.g.: Last week, I had to deal with an emergency descent. I had to take all the traffics in my sector on radar vectors, the one who turned most was a French speaking pilot (not a choice, matter of facts). Nobody knew why they were vectored until I asked the descending pilot which kind of assistance he needed on arrival. 40000 feet in less than 80 miles was a steep descent. No time to explain. I had this traffic less than 1 min on my freq.
Afterwards, I felt lucky that all the pilots had trusted me, whatever the language.