ATCFloripa
15th Apr 2011, 00:24
Hi there, I'm an air traffic controller for almost three decades and I am always concerned about safety, I am very serious about that.
I think a good way to avoid misunderstandings among the international community of pilots and air traffic controllers, could be creating and disseminating the examples collected in some sort of data bank.
It is much easier to learn from what happened to others than trying to imagine what could cause a possible misunderstanding. I have noticed that pilots tend to understand and do what they need to do and I believe that it is easier to retain the last words from what we hear, sometimes ignoring unintentionally part of what was said in a whole sentence.
What I mean to say is: let's use these forums to exchange our experience and knowledge to improve everyone's safety.
An example: in Brazil, there is an Airline named GOL, we do not pronounce the final L as "L", instead, the final L is pronounced like "U", therefor GOL sounds exactly like "go."
Of course we all know that no one is supposed to cross a runway without listening to an [U]unambiguous instruction,, but again, when the cockpit crew is dealing with the checklist, it might be possible that they could understand that they are "cleared to cross" or "cleared into position" by the way, I believe the expression "holding position" should be prohibited because, due to the similarity to the expression "cleared into position", a little noise in the transmission could cause a runway incursion.
I would like to encourage everyone to participate with stories of misunderstandings that happened or situations one heard about.
A few minutes spent here could help us preventing dangerous situations. Thank you.
I think a good way to avoid misunderstandings among the international community of pilots and air traffic controllers, could be creating and disseminating the examples collected in some sort of data bank.
It is much easier to learn from what happened to others than trying to imagine what could cause a possible misunderstanding. I have noticed that pilots tend to understand and do what they need to do and I believe that it is easier to retain the last words from what we hear, sometimes ignoring unintentionally part of what was said in a whole sentence.
What I mean to say is: let's use these forums to exchange our experience and knowledge to improve everyone's safety.
An example: in Brazil, there is an Airline named GOL, we do not pronounce the final L as "L", instead, the final L is pronounced like "U", therefor GOL sounds exactly like "go."
Of course we all know that no one is supposed to cross a runway without listening to an [U]unambiguous instruction,, but again, when the cockpit crew is dealing with the checklist, it might be possible that they could understand that they are "cleared to cross" or "cleared into position" by the way, I believe the expression "holding position" should be prohibited because, due to the similarity to the expression "cleared into position", a little noise in the transmission could cause a runway incursion.
I would like to encourage everyone to participate with stories of misunderstandings that happened or situations one heard about.
A few minutes spent here could help us preventing dangerous situations. Thank you.