shinners

Could you tell me when happened this fact and how the situation was resolved by the crew?
i CAN'T FIND THE VIDEO, ANYWAY AN air france (I think flight 417) airplane was approaching an airport (maybe in argentina) where the atc couldn't speak english very well and was told to the pilot to take runway 35 (where ILS was inoperative), the captain asked many times if the ils on 35 was operative (because didn't received signal) and the answer was always yes, after a while he was told "no"

meantime the aircraft lost lots of minutes and the "fuel low" sign was on

KAG

YouTube - Unfriendly skies of Argentina - Part I

Is that the one you are looking for?

shinners

yeah is that one

ACCP

Amazing ?!?!?
That's the latinos for you...

Henry VIII

Unfortunately "normal" ATC phraseology in South America...

shinners

so with some spanish is possible to avoid things like that

Henry VIII

Bear in mind that many South American's crews operate within their country only, so a lot of them DO NOT speak/understand any english word. Add huge areas with poor radio coverage.

SEE Here

Fullblast

ILS unserviceable since many years. And nothing in the NOTAMs?
Hard to believe.

FB

shinners

and this one?


YouTube - Unfriendly skies of Argentina - Part 2

Henry VIII

That's another common problem in Latin America.
Many countries forward notam update for their major apt only, I heard in order to save money but I'm not sure about the reason(s).
Unless your company agreed with a local handling in order to receive updated text, the risk to download incomplete notam from the different systems is high.

Jumbo744

to the Air France crew.

LSGG

And who says the AF pilots can't speak a word of English ????

hotelmodemetar

well, well.. this story is about a communication problem, maybe AF should have spoken more slowly, clearly in order to make sure the other one understands. Maybe they should have asked the controler to confirm the runway in use, and the procedure to follow,etc, instead of believing in an hesitating "yes" from him. We can't deny that this ATC guy is absolutely crap, but AF should have been more careful. What about Notams? did the crew read it?

discus2

Hotelmodemetar<
Dude !
Have you counted the number of times the AF tried to clarify if that ILS35 was in use and operable ?
If that s not enough ...
The ATC was just incompetent, period.
Even more, irresponsible when challenged and not responding to further calls.
This was outrageous !

NineInchSnail

Is that me or the AF pilot talking on the radio sound British???? Was it an actual AF flight or operated by a partner like Air Atlanta?

flyblue

It was an AF aircraft operated by a French AF crew