The “Language Barrier” - personal experiences ?
Thread Starter
The “Language Barrier” - personal experiences ?
I know that there has been a lot of prior discussion about the language barrier and there are plenty of documented incidents about ATC confusion for both controllers and pilots alike, I just wondered how many of our members have experienced any potentially dangerous situations on a firsthand basis and if some areas are more problematical than others ?
If only I had the speed-typing ability to respond in a timely manner.........needless to say, the Middle East is an 'interesting' place to work from a language barrier aspect, amongst others! ICAO Level 6 my ar$e!!
Not personal, but I observed it and heard the RT exchange. In 1987 at Leeds Bradford, ATC instructed the crew of a JAT Boeing 727 to turn right on to the taxiway. They started to turn left. The Tower controller rectified the situation with repeated plain English at some volume: "Yugair 2759, RIGHT, RIGHT, RIGHT". They got the message.
Around the same time, the crew of a Hispania 737 bound for Palma made a complete pig's ear of an ATC clearance readback (this was years before Leeds Bradford embraced SIDs). The Tower controller very patiently said something like, 'Hispania XXXX, negative, let's start again, shall we ?' Second time was the charm.
Around the same time, the crew of a Hispania 737 bound for Palma made a complete pig's ear of an ATC clearance readback (this was years before Leeds Bradford embraced SIDs). The Tower controller very patiently said something like, 'Hispania XXXX, negative, let's start again, shall we ?' Second time was the charm.
Several but mainly in the cockpit
First was a near miss climbing over Belgium where the captain made small heading changes when we were on a radar heading..blamed me but I had told him that we were radar heading until level then own nav.
Some of the Swiss Germans had a habit of cutting corners especially on the Italian airway heading north around the military area near bologna. Always pretended they didn't understand but I was never sure.
Italian controllers would go ballistic and give us avoiding action.
Had one in Chicago were the captain didn't understand enter, cleared immediate take off in American speak..heavy jet on short final....the jet on approach "burnt" the approach..captain never realised what he had caused.
Changed my use of English so that they had to answer in a form which didn't include a yes or no response.
Far greater problem than accepted mixing different nationalities.
Heard several wrong read backs not corrected by controllers working Montpellier approach whilst gliding.
Some of the Swiss Germans had a habit of cutting corners especially on the Italian airway heading north around the military area near bologna. Always pretended they didn't understand but I was never sure.
Italian controllers would go ballistic and give us avoiding action.
Had one in Chicago were the captain didn't understand enter, cleared immediate take off in American speak..heavy jet on short final....the jet on approach "burnt" the approach..captain never realised what he had caused.
Changed my use of English so that they had to answer in a form which didn't include a yes or no response.
Far greater problem than accepted mixing different nationalities.
Heard several wrong read backs not corrected by controllers working Montpellier approach whilst gliding.
An interesting story told me by air traffic controllers in Japan which I wrote on a similar thread (for someone's research paper?) here maybe four or five years ago. I was helping them with their English lessons up in the control tower. The moral of the story was to avoid the danger word 'next', as in "Turn left onto the 'next' taxiway".
A landing Cathay pilot thought they meant not 'this' one but the next one, at Narita, and came face to face with another aircraft. Difference in usage between US and UK style English.
Use 'the first', 'the second', etc., was the advice I gave them.
A landing Cathay pilot thought they meant not 'this' one but the next one, at Narita, and came face to face with another aircraft. Difference in usage between US and UK style English.
Use 'the first', 'the second', etc., was the advice I gave them.
Sorry, but I don't understand that, and it sounds important! do you mean someone understood the instruction 'enter' to mean ' cleared immediate take off '?
Instruction meant immediately enter and take off with traffic on short final..dont ask me the yank text but it was plain to me.
I should add that when in first flew into Kennedy in the late 70s I hadnt a clue even though I had writ down the clearance before hand...the ultimate was follow the rabbit speedbird heavy and contact the tower...
The worst lot are listening to the frogs (no I'm not racist as I is one)..how some of them are allowed to fly in international airspace I don't know...always worth a larf.
I should add that when in first flew into Kennedy in the late 70s I hadnt a clue even though I had writ down the clearance before hand...the ultimate was follow the rabbit speedbird heavy and contact the tower...
The worst lot are listening to the frogs (no I'm not racist as I is one)..how some of them are allowed to fly in international airspace I don't know...always worth a larf.
A bizjet at Farnborough was told 'take the next right and line up runway 25'.
He taxiied straight past it into a cul-de-sac.
The pilot was Tom Cruise flying his own aircraft so maybe that's allowed.
He taxiied straight past it into a cul-de-sac.
The pilot was Tom Cruise flying his own aircraft so maybe that's allowed.
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Planet earth
Posts: 406
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
After all those years i still have problems with the germans. I simply can not get used to it. If they speak slowly, no problem, but when it is getting hectic they speak so fast it is getting unreadable. Especially in munich. It already happened to me a couple of times i missed things because of that. Sometimes i had to ask 4 times to repeat.
My experience.
My experience.
My father who was a pilot during WWII told me that Dutch pilots used to prefer speaking English with air traffic controllers as their own Dutch language was more difficult somehow even for them over the airwaves, (why, pitched too high perhaps?). Could some languages be more suited than others? Probably not, to answer my own question, as there are so many varieties of 'English'.
Confused, please ignore.
Confused, please ignore.
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: I wouldn't know.
Posts: 4,497
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
After all those years i still have problems with the germans. I simply can not get used to it. If they speak slowly, no problem, but when it is getting hectic they speak so fast it is getting unreadable. Especially in munich. It already happened to me a couple of times i missed things because of that. Sometimes i had to ask 4 times to repeat.
My experience.
My experience.
Worse one I had was into Conakry when I did a month with air afrique just after a coup which saw the last lot hanging from a bridge. Skipper a Swiss german racist and not terribly bright. The new presidents palace surrounded by prohibited airspace with the warning of ground to air missiles and that we would be shot down. Notam had a Trench 1/3rd of the way down the runway. New Chinese controllers whose second language was French and couldn't understand our request about the runway length available whatever tongue we used..decided a low downwind look see and all we could make out was the orange earth colour of the works. So elected to land from the palace end and plonk it on the numbers. Skipper took it..SOP..and we crossed the trench at 60knots..fortunately it had been filled in.
He became chief pilot on the 747 a job no one else wanted.
and you tell your mates about it and no buggar would believe you.
He became chief pilot on the 747 a job no one else wanted.
and you tell your mates about it and no buggar would believe you.
As a beginner at this game, I must say that I constantly hear instructions that would be utterly incomprehensible if I didn't know what they were saying! It's like those recordings played backwards that some people believe contain a message about devil worship, the imagined message becomes audible only when someone tells you what it says. Indeed, the advice on 'understanding ATC' usually says know what to expect. But isn't that a bit of a problem?! Isn't there a constant risk of expectation bias ? a good example is when I ask for a frequency change, I know what freq I will be given, indeed I invariably have it pre-set on the radio, but even then all I hear is 'callsign bleeegh', I cheerfully read-back the freq I expected and switch over. Similarly, it took a while for me to learn that the noise I hear from ground after landing says 'baseviabravo'. I guess I can always extract the critical things like clear to take off or land, line-up and wait etc and there are things I know I cannot do until I have actually heard a message, but it seems to me that 80% of the comms from ATC are a sort of token noise on which pilots impose the message they expect!
Sticking to ICAO standard phraseology, avoiding local colloquialisms and ensuring complete and correct readbacks is helpful. As is constantly monitoring what is happening and intervening as necessary.
