Whilst English is the accepted international language of aviation the degree of which is spoken, and more importantly understood, varies considerably around the world.
Having spent many years flying through international airspace and into countries where English is not the first language it became readily apparent that whilst ATC can handle the level of English for normal everyday operations when things go wrong the level understanding is a whole different ball game.
I remember one particular example at Japan’s Narita Airport during a night time departure for LAX when it all went wrong. The weather was deteriorating rapidly with increasing rain and lightning around the field. I had been cleared for take off on Runway 34, but by now we were experiencing heavy rain and the aircraft was being buffeted by strong wind gusts. One look at the aircraft’s radar showed solid red across the entire sweep.
I decided to delay my take-off and advised ATC of the reason. The reply was another clearance to take-off.
This was repeated three times before the message got through to the controller, and we were subsequently cleared to taxi down the runway and take the next taxiway right onto the parallel taxiway. Unfortunately this put us in conflict with three aircraft taxing for departure on the same taxiway. Each of these three aircraft were subsequently cleared to line up and depart but having taking one look at the weather off the end of the runway followed our own example.
In spite of all attempts to convey the weather problem to ATC by myself and the other three aircraft the lack of understanding appeared to be the main problem and it was only the final onslaught of the weather over the airport which got though to the controllers.
Unfortunately by now there was grid lock on the tarmac which took a couple of hours to sort out after the weather storm had passed.