Practicable/Practical, Competence/Competency etc...?

[Contacttower]

Can someone explain to me the use of a lot of words in used in aviation documents and regulations that are very similar to ones in common usage but slightly different. This phenomenon slightly baffles me...

I can think of three examples...

Practicable as opposed to practical. As in "The captain must land as soon as practicable if an engine is lost."

Certificated as opposed to certified. As in "This equipment is certificated for aviation use."

Competency as opposed to competence. As in "We use competency based training" (as opposed to incompetency based training?:confused:)

I'm sure I could think of others but as someone who is quite interested in how the English language is deployed I have always been curious about this. I mean do these words actually mean something different from their regular equivalents? No one would use competency or practicable in a normal conversation for example yet these words are used all the time in aviation.

Are they just another example of superfluous modern management speak? Can they be used interchangeably or are there actually situations where they are linguistically correct?

Someone care to comment?

[Dave Gittins]

Practicable means possible.

Practical means taking account of all the circumstances and so as not to be too seriously inconvenienced. i.e. has a lesser imperative

Example: Last night BA137 LGW to FRE went tech 2 hours into the flight and returned to LGW. That was "practical" because it made sense.

If it had landed as soon as "practicable" it would be someplace 2 hrs down route now. Not very practical for BA.

[Contacttower]

OK so why not just say "possible"? Why use another word that sounds very similar but means something slightly different to practical?

[Piltdown Man]

I've nicked this bit from the interweb: Something that is practicable is something that can be reasonably done. Look at the word within the word, practice, plus the suffix -able, and you have something that is able to be put into practice, or practicable.

I consider the difference between 'practicable' and 'possible' like this. Following an engine failure, if the checklist says 'as soon as practicable' you will go somewhere 'sensible' - which makes it a judgement call. 'As soon as possible' means something different. It means land at very first airport you can land at: ignoring access, handling, engineering, RFF, medical back-up etc.

Competence (or competency) should describe the ability of an individual to do a job properly. However, the low-life in Human Remains tend to use it to describe attributes required for a job (or are they now called "pivotal roles within a dynamic environment"?) with and other such bunkum. But as I'm unlikely to ever apply for another job they can shove terms like this where they keep their common sense.

PM