Originally Posted by fyrefli
I actually parsed this as:
"il est où, hein?"
They would sound very similar.
In fact no... they don't sound very similar. It's due to their particular prosodie (tone). Both are interjectives which phonetically sounds quite differently (at least for French native speakers): "hein ?" and "euh..." are not usually confused in transcription.
- "euh..." is a sign of hesitancy, hence it is pronounced low, like a breath.
- "hein ?" is a sign of insistancy, hence it is pronounced high, short and distinctively.
Also, "hein ?" would call for an answer / acknowledgement :
- je suis d’accord qu’on est en manuel hein ?
- Surtout essaie de toucher le moins possible les commandes en en latéral hein ?
- Je suis en TOGA hein ?
Hence, "il est où euh..." should point at something ("where is [it]... ), not at someone (who else?). The PNF only called the captain after saying that. Before calling him, he perfectly knew where his captain was (resting).
Originally Posted by spagiola
"il vient" also would be a very unusual way to refer to an aircraft maneuver, unless one was at an airport waiting for the aircraft to arrive, for example. If it were "il monte" or "il descend" or "il se redresse" (he's recovering") or "il pique" (he's diving) it would make more sense, but I cannot think of any maneuver where a pilot would say "il vient".
So my conclusion is that "il" refers to the captain, and not the aircraft.
I will agree with your good point. Interpretation is based on context which is the primary clue. Notwithstanding, Such talks reading are revealing some ambiguousness not always easy to catch at first glance. Moreover, those dialogues are not complete and are lacking the necessary punctuation.
CVR transcipts lacks crucial referentials to be perfectly understood. If one factors the intrinsic ambiguousness of any langage while, in translation, further involontary ambiguousness could be added in the process, this may end quite far from the reality. Do not expect something clearer once released in English, rather the contrary!