Is English the official language of ATC or not?
 

I thought it was. And I assumed it definitely would be at an airport such as Geneva. But listening over the Internet to transmissions from the Departure/Arrivals frequency this afternoon, I heard some Air France pilots talking to controllers in French. I don't mean simply saying 'au revoir' at the end of the transmission. The whole transmission and reply was in French.

'What's new?', I hear you say. But is this not unlawful?

Surely, speaking in French in the flight deck is one thing, but if you communicate with an ATCO you must speak English, otherwise you exclude other pilots on that frequency who do not speak/understand French from understanding your conversation, which could be a safety issue?

Am I being naive here?!

Nick

Not that I'm aware of.

The country's language (if it's an ICAO language) is the official language used by that country's ATC. However, if someone calls ATC in English, ATC must reply in English. The "safety issue" bit was discussed here in PPRuNe not too long ago.

Nicholas49..... this has been debated since Pontius was a pilot. It's legit and it happens all the time, not just at airfields but at ATCC too.

ICAO Standard phraseology is what should be used. It just happens to be English words.

Civil aviation law is the point. Not ICAO recommendation or practice.

In my Civil Aviation law is very clearly written that on frequency you may speak English or any other state' official language( We have officially three by name ,but it is one actually) . So we have to.We are aware that it might rise some safety issue but we solved it with adequate sentence in MATS. If any doubt could arise from using different language on frequnce than operational ATCO must translate to all concerned parties all necessary information.

De facto situation is that 99 % of pilots use English language,at "resonable" level,and only a few military pilots or sport pilots croosing control zone sometimes use "local" terms and procedures , widely known as "shall we...." :E

but you have to leave the legal space for use of local language because of the constitution matters. Everyone has right to speak his own language.
Since the constitution is the highest than all lower level documents must follow constitution.

Generally correct.....when English is used. The ICAO rules say the language used should be the local language or English on request - or something to that effect, I don't have the book to hand at the moment.

I see the reasons why local languages are allowed to be used. After all, Geneva is in a country one of whose official languages is French.

But I guess it also means that if those British pilots I heard on the same frequency don't understand French (not to presume of course - they may speak fluent French like most of us :}), then they also didn't understand what was said between the ATCO and French aircraft. That can't be great.

Maybe it doesn't matter. I'm certainly not in a position to judge. Nor am I trying to re-write the rules. I am, simply, a bit surprised.

as we told you, it is legal, it is not safe,and some mitigation is applicable(translation or separate frequency)

What is the most important thing to understand? Geneva ATCOs is multilingual, definitely. If you don't know French ,they know English.

In some countries there is operational ATCO on published frequency , communication is/ should be done on English but ATCO on duty doesn't know English at all.
that is the problem, and it happens. :}

Yeah, yeah... We know, we know... :rolleyes:

Nicholas49,
being a French controller, I'm (ashamed to be) used to use English and French on the same Frequencies.
On pilot's request.
The pilot is always the first to speak. For safety reasons, I won't play the game of speaking English with a pilot who speaks French. I don't know if he's able to speak English. Just for the same reason, I speak English with a pilot who speaks English. He might not understand if I speak French.

As Singapourcanac said, the translation (or explaination of the situation) is given to the pilot who is not supposed to have understood, when I suspect he could be interested. Either French or English.

At many airports in South America the Jeppesen Approach Plate says "Spanish Required" indicating that tower personnel do not speak anything but Spanish. Fortunately I also speak spanish so it has not been a problem for me.

So much for ICAO...


Bill

Sorry, I'm not very smart... Could you please explain to me what should we be ashamed of? Of being able to do our jobs in two different languages? (like I'm sure you are capable of). Of complying with my national AIP (based on ICAO)?

I don't make the rules, I follow them. If you don't like them is not my problem, but I definitely have nothing to be ashamed of. And like I've posted before in some other thread here, when it is necessary (situational awareness, traffic separations...) I use allways english whenever there is a non-spanish pilot involved.

Situational awareness is enhanced by single language communications. However, there is little point if everyone is 'forced' onto a non-native language (pilots and controllers) to facilitate the one a day/week/month/year English only operator. Obviously it would be up to local regulators to determine the language(s) to be used; I hope that these regulators are constantly reviewing things based upon reports where situation awareness or language issues arise and subsequently when necessary changes are made to SOPs.

The other issue is non-radio communications and it's general degradation to situational awareness; things like CPDLC/ACARS and other forms of Datalink where information can be relayed without voice comms; providing no-one with situational awareness regardless of the language used.

Md80/Shorts 360 accident
 

F-GHED G-SSWN

This is an interesting read if you havn't heard about this already. Its quite a bit into the report until you reach...

..."In the radio exchanges with ATC, the MD 83 crew spoke French while the Shorts crew spoke English"

S/he must be able to speak English if s/he holds an ATPL, no?

Wasn't there an issue recently where some English native-speaking pilots did not obtain the highest level of English proficiency?

Blockla - I agree entirely, but Geneva is not one of those airports, is it?

Here we go again, but to answer briefly once more : the language to be spoken on the R/T is the language(s) stipulated in the AIP of teh country you are flying in. if in Geneva English and French is mentionned you can use either of them, like in many countries in the world like Montreal for instance.

Again,as someone said we are paid to obey the rules . Am I for changing the rules, yes, but until they are changed I have to follow them. So if I am, say in Paris, and an aircrfat call me in French, I answer in French, period.

I know it was a very lomg time ago but to my mind the use of Spanish by the Los Rodeos Approach controller to a Spanish registered inter-island flight was a major factor in the accident to GBDAN. Worth a read. Air Accidents Investigation: 8/1981 G-BDAN

OK, thank you for the explanation.

I didn't mean to kick the hornet's nest or resurrect an old debate. I genuinely didn't know what the official position was.

Thanks for the link, A_I.

I've read "analysis" and "conclusions" and I didn't find anything about speaking in Spanish.

Too bad !
This debate must be older than the Tower of Babel...:}

PS : Yes, but I believe IFR rating doesn't always mean ATPL, hence English rating. And some airspaces include VFR and IFR traffic together on the same freq...
An old debate !

If nothing has changed currently there are (unfortunately) 6 official ICAO languages so that you are not allowed to complain, moreover if this matter hurted you while listening the frequency using internet :ouch: