breguet
Regardless what you say, two aircraft speaking different languages was a cause of the incident. Don't give me that crap about "Read the report"... not sure what field you work in but you should know as well as I do, the truth is not always presented in incident/accident reports. I was involved in an incident where I was a coordinator and the radar controller lost sep down to 1 mile/400 feet. It was pure controller error but the report was half a dozen pages talking about teamwork and equipmen etc... The use of French in Canada is purely political. If private pilot xx wants to fly around and do circuits at the local airport I have no prob with him being provided french ATC as most others flying at that airport are probably french speaking as well. French or anything others language aside from english has no place in the IFR ATC world period. Every ATC provider in the world is making efforts to harmonize airspace, procedures, equipment.. the one things they have problems with is the language.. why??? POLITICS! The Swiss made a huge decision back a couple years ago, no more FRENCH R/T above FL 270. The world did not fall apart and those who we were accomodating in french just spoke english and no one complained.
No one can accuse me of being anti-french or a french hater since french is my first language and I was born and raised in a french community. I just believe everyone should use 1 language.
breguet.... just to add
"Basically french was not the cause of this incident as you seem to imply. The report states: "A risk of collision occurred as the result of an ineffective controller handover procedure..."
Amongst the 18 findings of the report only one mentionned the fact that the RJ crew did not undestand french and it is in 13th position. Hence, your assertion that it was remove for political reason is absolutely false."
I am very aware of this incident and even know those 2 controllers who were involved. Was also a poor visibility day in Ottawa tower and the fact that an aircraft was in position was somewhat overlooked. If R/T was in English there is a HUGE HUGE chance it would have been saved earlier. Incidents happen when a chain of errors is present. Than series of errors could have been stopped, use of 1 language on the radio is a safety net. Bottom line, if everyone does their job 100% correctly 100% of the time then who cares what anyone speaks. IF the airplane turn when i tell him or climbs and descends when I tell him too... and the controller spots every single conflict then we would live in a perfect world... but we don't... In ATC, we have in certain places 2 people working a sector.. why? Second set of eyes..., we have a conflict alert on the radar...why? because we might make a mistake, we have minimum safe altitude warning..why? because you the pilot might make a mistake... the list goes on and on and on... and for me.. if i have to fly to go see grandma somewhere far away.. i am damn glad for all these safety nets... 1 R/T language is part of that list and unfortunately for POLITICAL reasons we can't change it in Canada....