it's time for the chinese pilot to learn english
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9AlGBXD_F4

:\ :\ :\ :\

Oh my god! Poor chinese pilots. Listening to the conversation at first gave me a chuckle, but realizing what a disaster this is going to be (heaven forbid!) i just started shaking my head in total disbelief. I wonder how they managed to land that plane in the correct runway if they couldn't even reaback a simple taxi instruction. Like I said, this is a disaster waiting to happen. Tsk tsk tsk!

True, but Kennedy ATC don't exactly help themselves either. Even those of us that are native english speakers sometimes have trouble!

whenever I hear people going "Oh, my god, why can't these guys understand english"...............I ask myself one question, "How would i get on doing it in Chinese ??"......................

I think the ground guy, like most NA controllers needs to A: Slow Down B: Use standard R/T Phraseology C: show a little patience and understanding

sorry but I have every sympathy for Air china in this case...............Next time you have to ask the other guy to translate what Tapei or Tokyo are saying.....................think about this OK ??

They don't have 35-40 aircraft under ground control at a time in TPE or NRT. JFK controllers don't often have time to repeat a clearance 3-4 times and understandably get upset!

During my first flight out of HKG had a bit of a problem with this particular airline. Instead of holding short of W2 they just drove by doing 30 kts or so despite reading back the clearance several times.

Personally I'm a big fan of the system they use at LHR with the stopbars and block system.

In the northeast, it seems the controllers love to rapid-fire those radiocalls, often at the expense of clarity, they need to realize that foreign carriers are not in tune with the clipped slang they use over there.
You often hear them repeat 3 or 4 times, which makes you wonder if it wouldn't be better to say those clearances more slowly and clearly, so they can be read back correctly the first time.

Another thing is that the atc controllers there have this lovely new york attitude, and can seem quite intimidating/overbearing at times, a quality that can work badly with some cultures.

I agree with Sizematters:ok:

me thinks the RT phraseology at JFK sucks at the best of times, even I dont understand them half the time and I`m English!!!:eek: Imagine how
Wun Wing Lo feels :yuk:

The controller is just rude...as usual, think there's a case where a Singapore Cargo pilot was in similar situation, got yelled at by the JFK controllers...oh well.

Things definitely need to improve...every pilot should understand basic english.

Having listened to the youtube excerpt I can not hear anything wrong with the JFK controller. He was unnecessarilly verbose to the pilot before the Air China, but there was nothing wrong with his controlling of the Air China. In fact he went out of his way to ask the question slowly and several times over.

I don't know whether chinese airlines still use interpreters on the jump seat, they certainly used to . That would cause problems as the interpreter had to reply to ATC and then tell the pilots. With the pilots often taxiing at high speed they would often be too late in their reactions.

In fact they often seem to intentionally misunderstand so that they can get priority just so ATC can move them on out of their airspace or (as in this case) ground space.

English as a foreign language
 

Some years ago in Toulouse, I saw a French instuctor teaching an Air China crew in the Sim. The crew had to work through an interpreter, so one can only guess how they got on with the ECAM! Later, over coffee, I asked the somewhat exasperated instuctor how he coped with a crew that could not speak English. His succinct reply:
"Mon vieux, it would be simpler to teach the interpreter to fly!" :ugh:
Neppy
Deep & Silent
:cool:

This cuts both ways.

Sure the chinese guys need better english - but I tell you one thing the Americans can REALLY do with better more standard english.
I am native english speaker and mostly have to really concentrate when american controllers speak to me. They generally assume you know your way around their airport and their slang - which is mostly not the case. I fly around the planet to 40 different destinations and might see JFK once a year!!!
American controllers should realize that the average pilots world is a bit bigger than the average controllers backyard.

Sounds like a standard day at the office really.....

I think that's why they give you an Airport Diagram in your Jepp's and good Airmanship would dictate that you study your "expected" taxi route... Don't expect to be lead by the nose... "I'm unfamiliar, requst progressive taxi." won't cut it...

His English is better than my Chinese!

Having said that, I was talking to a controller at YVR once, he said it was actually NavCanada (ATC) SOP to move every other english speaking aircraft before they would dare change the route of an asian carrier. He said changing thier flightpath was an absolute end of the line solution. Scary.

Glacier,

His english should be better than your chinese. English is the standard language of air traffic control.

Neptunus Rex has an anecdote that I have also heard when I was at Toulouse. The chinese pilots were expert at flying and knew no english. The interpreter was expert at english and knew nothing about flying. The instructors had to explain a lot to the interpreters so that they could 'explain' what was required to the pilots. I understand it was quite frustrating at times.

They must say that to everybody, I heard it too in the mid '90's. Our Instructor seemed quite relieved to see a coupla Canadian's walk in his door after his last Chinese students...

Do they speak in chinese also when reading the checklist? Hope not. :bored:

all chinese airlines the flt deck communication is in chinese.....

Just to let you know, with the mainland carriers in HK, pushbacks are conducted in madarin, tech log write up are in chinese, dual language versions of MELs etc are available. With CI headset comms are still in english.