Dont agree with just English. If you are in France, why don't speak in French? Why English? For safety reasons? If both, flightcrew and atc are happy with any ICAO lang, just go ahead. Always following company procedures of course.

PA-28-180, I completely agree that it can be done. Having worked with the excellent trainers from AFL and St Petersburg, I can say that they are among the most progressive and positively-minded professionals in their field and they are well able to train to international standards, given government support. Over to you, France.

It is important, as highlighted in Green Guard's posting, to forget the native-speaker idiosyncrasies (which exist in every language) and focus on clear, direct messages which aid the situational awareness of the listeners.

As ChristiaanJ points out, the very least that one can do is to "slow down and articulate"- something which is lost on many native speakers as well as those who have done their training in the US and who seem to imagine that speaking in the style of a Texan cattle auctioneer, or like Dean Martin after a dozen Martinis, will somehow magically enable them to be understood by the international aviation community.

CAP 413 Would be a good start.
CAP 413: Radiotelephony Manual | Publications | CAA


And what about aircraft transiting the airspace; German, English, Spanish, American, Italian, along with Far Eastern carriers and Middle Eastern carriers, Hungarian, Romanian, Polish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch.... etc. etc. ?

stuck gear, being an American, I gave them the FAR/AIM, that´ll mess them up... ¨taxi to position and hold¨

Also, aren´t Russian, Arabic, Chinese, French, and Spanish the other ICAO languages?

Colombian AF English is rubbish anyway, save a couple of exceptions. Even their Spanish RT is rubbish, way too much out of standard if you ask me :*

Native languages and ATC will always be a hot potato and a line has to be drawn somewhere.

However the use of a common language did save my bacon last year down in the Indian Ocean when descending into a island where French is commonly used. I was cleared to the same level as a slower aircraft ahead and we were both instructed to proceed to the hold. Had French has been used, would my next line of defence had been the TCAS? :eek:

Hats off to the Russians if they are making moves to introduce English throughout.

They'd better learn chinese if they want to stay ahead.

Anyway I can speak 4 languages and use 3 for radio communication.

When I see a colleague from UK, country that doesn't even have a space, helicopter, aircraft, satellite industry (like eurozone have, thales, eurocopter, arianespace, airbus... being mainly non-english speaking area but space/aviation world leader) complaining about poor level of english in japan, france, germany, china, russia... I smile.

20th century language (or at least the second half, first half was french) was defenitely english, not sure about the 21st yet...

Free advice for english (only) speaking people: spend more time studying (a new language for example?) than complaining about the poor level in english of this or that country on internet.


Just editing my post to say it's was too much to write UK doesn't have any aircraft industry, because RR, BA146, Harrier, Concorde, ... Immediately comes to mind, sorry about that my bad.

fair point KAG,

However, conversely, about half* the civil use aircraft in the world are on the November register.

* figure is 46.5% to 49% depending on source.

What about the world international airliners? I was told that more than 50% of them will be chinese (registered) by 2025... What about now? Probabely that more than 80% are not N- already. Just a wild guess, I don't have the numbers.

Of course I have no problem with a N- C150 doing touch and goes in Flint or Casper city using english on the radio, but I don't think that is the point.

KAG,

We're not really talking about C-150's doing touch and go's in Flint, or anywhere to that matter.

The civil register is that. Aircraft in civil use. That also includes as well as c-150's, commercial jet transport aircraft, both in scheduled and non-scheduled operation as well as Gulfstreams, Challengers, Lears, Citations etc. etc. All of them share the airspace internationally with each other.

Situational awareness doesn't just come down to knowing what you are doing but also with the capacity to understand what other aircraft in the same airspace are doing.

Maybe 50% of aircraft will be Chinese and on the civil register by 2025, maybe not. but thats then, not now. Maybe by 2025, the world wont exist, having been assured complete destruction triggered off by a nuclear reaction by North Korea. Or maybe not.

I really cannot be @rsed to get into some flag waving, jingoism about whether Cantonese or Mandarin should be the common language of aviation and any supporting reasons why. It's a pointless and infantile discussion.

Remove nationalistic pride or rhetoric from the equation and look at the practicality of a common language. To wit, the Russians are making a common sense move in the name of safety progression, not just within themselves but also on an international basis. Fair play to them.

Don't pretend you don't understand what I mean. And don't give me any lesson in pride, keep it for yourself: you want everybody to speak your language and you insist with your C150 N registered. Remove them from your numbers, keep the international flights, and come back talk to me. Anyway whithout the world and mainly china to buy american government debt, american companies debt, american families/personnal debts, and international students/customer coming to get cheap training I am not sure many N- C150 would fly around.

I can use your language, you cannot use mine, so the same goes for your language lesson: keep it for yourself.



Don't try any perspective trick on me please, if there is no earth of course there is no talk.

There is a simple and fair solution:

When flying in controlled airspace (IFR), pilots should have to speak English to minimum ICAO level 4.

When flying in uncontrolled airspace pilots should have to speak to at least ICAO level 4 of the language of the country whose airspace they are flying in. This would avoid the ludicrous situation of non-English speaking PPLs, ultralight pilots, glider pilots etc being forced to speak English in their own country just so that visiting PPLs from other countries can understand them.

So, Trim, if a pilot is born and raised in country X, pays their taxes, has never had a single violation, but only speaks the native language of X, they're not allowed to fly in controlled airspace?

Yea... no.

There is no simple solution to this problem folks.
UNLESS, we were to make it actually logical, that in order to fly in airspace over country X, you must speak and understand to a level 4 the native language of country X.

Er, there is - pick a language and make that the standard.... :rolleyes: .... which of course is the sticking point of this thread.

For those advocating (ahem!) Madarin.... perhaps you would switch your computer over to use the Madarin character set... and then:

:ugh:

Fine for INTERNATIONAL, but not for national flights.
Why should a language that is not native to country X be mandated to everyone who wants to fly in country X, who does NOT want to fly internationally?
If you only fly in France, you should not have to speak English to be allowed to fly.
If you only fly in Russia, ditto.
That's why it's not simple.

Or why not remove head from a place where the sun doesn't shine, and simply accept the fact.
As said before it is pretty much only english native speakers that complain, and they are usually the ones that don't speak a single other language...

This Will NEVER be solved, unless we move to datalink clearances. Which in fact means you won't hear anything on the radio. Which in turn makes the entire Situational awareness argument moot.:ok:

Dear jock
you will have to choose a language for datalink
I suggest RUSSIAN
Nice simple phonetics and just enough alphabet
English rules, rule britannia

I recent found out at a trade fair that most Russians involved in the aviation and aerospace industry speak perfect Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese). So eloquent, it's like music to your ears !

I'm sure they'd have no problems with English.

Speak whatever language you want.
 

If I am a guest in your country I don't care what language you speak on the radio. If I happen to speak yours I will try to use it as well.

I used to give a crap about this issue until I realized the TCAS works pretty da.n well anyway.

Just for the record I do speak 4 languages fairly well, after six beers I can do a couple more languages in a pinch. I am sick of learning though, so I will not learn any more.

Spasiba.

Mandarin not madarin (or putonghua, which is pinyin for： 普通话) better say "chinese": it is not wrong to say it, and you won't do any mistake that way. Personaly I love this language, chinese characters are pure art, and chinese grammar is extremely easy. It was a pleasure to learn this language.

Anyway, we don't advocate, we just observe the world evolving. That's different. Some people adapt, some are open minded, some are afraid to lose their supposedly linguistic superiority, behavio(u)rs are like languages, there are many of them.