If everybody on this world would be speaking THE same language, (and probably look THE same etc. etc.) why would we need to travel at all ?
Well, business and tourism (as I don't think there would be the same things all over the globe) but that's a little drift off thread, wouldn't you agree?
Now, I'm going to put myself on the line here and discuss something I thought about when I was in flight school and I haven't discussed it with anyone yet. Here goes.
Let us all suppose we are flying in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, or any other country where English is not the standard language for aviation. Locals or those who know the local language are flying using the local language. Then someone who
doesn't speak the local language chimes in in English. ATC will respond to them in English as standard.
Now everyone on the frequency switches to English R/T; how does everybody knows? Those already in the frequency notice that everyone is speaking in English now, so they will start doing it as well; if someone forgets the R/T is in English now, the ATC will reply in English so the crew realises which language is being used. Those who are switching to the frequency will find out that the controller is responding them in English and everyone else is speaking in English, so they must start using English as well. Aircraft transmitting in English leaves the frequency then ATC restarts R/T in the local language via the same reasoning as the initial switch to English. Since everyone in the frequency is involved it shouldn't be easy for someone to forget which language we are all using. The "orchestra director" (so to speak) is the ATC since it will respond to all aircraft in the language used in that moment. This procedure doesn't clutter up the frequency any further by stating every now and then "attention all aircraft we are using X language now" either.
I came up with this idea when I heard controllers in Colombia would speak in Spanish to Colombian aircraft (or otherwise Spanish-speaking aircraft) using English and then the Colombian crew would reply in English making the ATC realise their mistake and retransmitting the instruction in English.
Points of "interest":
- The procedure calls for helpful and effective interaction between pilots and ATC, so it requires a remarkably good ATC-Crew coordination.
- Based on what I've read on this thread before, this procedure wouldn't be practical in uncontrolled space as some local pilots (most of them maybe?) don't speak English at all.
- All busy airports, i.e. those with permanent English speaking crews on the frequency, will maintain English R/T all the time, which is the purpose of this whole deal as those are the airports we all need to be in the same page given that there are lots of us flying in a relatively small airspace.
- The airports that will have the "hardest time" will be those with intermittent presence of English speaking crews as those are the ones with the biggest amount of "language-switches"
- Since the most amount of pressure is put on the ATC as they are the ones who are indeed "orchestrating", maybe some visual cue will be designed so they always know which language are they suppose to use. Nothing fancy really, a couple of labelled lights somewhere on the radar screen will do, a la Master Warning and Master Caution on our aircraft.
So, I shall now go over there and hide behind that trash bin waiting for your opinions/responses/whatever comes out.
Toodles chaps!
