Observations on RT of Native English Speakers
 

I was surprised many years ago when it dawned on me that in actual fact, the majority of pilots and controllers in the world do not speak English (or any variant thereof) as a first language, seconds after, the surprised wore off, and I actually realised that tha should have been obvious for much longer.

For the people that are on this thread that genuinely care about this subject, one of the best document to point you towards is this

http://caa.gateway.bg/upload/docs/9835_1_ed.pdf

Doc 9835 Manual on the
Implementation of ICAO
Language Proficiency
Requirements

This document was aimed at national bodies, training organisations, test centres and training departments within airlines, and it really is rather thorough.

By now, I have already used the word Centre and said "really is rather" so, no points for guesing where I am from! But, having lived out of the country for 3 years now, and working privately in the field of English for aviation, not just owning my own specialist school, but having also written on the subject in aviation magazines here (not in the letters page, but commissioned pieces), using my second language, Brazilian Portuguese, I feel that I can and should talk about the subject matter.

In the most part, the failing appears to be in instructing how to use English with second language speakers, many native speakers (of all languages) tend to assume that the second language speaker understands everything being said, because the first language speaker dominates the language. It is not true. As a part of a good language course, some time should be given to teaching some amount of cultural awareness and differences not only in accents, but in rythmn. These differences are not generally taught to pilots from the UK or from The States, I know that some specialist training is given to ATCOs and by some larger carriers. I teach in tamdem with an American teacher (from NC) (he has no aviation background, I am a pilot) it is important that our students have access to both forms of the language (many of my pilots operate weekly in and out of The States, my partner is invaluable to the process) However, when working on accents, and sound production we tend to push our students towards a more British way of speaking, this is due to no particular personal preference, but purely in a linguistic sense we agreed that many British English pronunciations make the Phonological awareness of the language for the student much easier to comprehend.

An 'old chesnut'

betty got a bit of butter v beddy go' bi' o' budder in the unlikely event of having to use that on the radio, the British accent is going to be better heard. It was not unommon to hear my pilot friends in the UK mimmicking the Continental pilots in jest when we drank in bars, flight clubs etc, Connenalwonofreewiffya .... With a small amount of training offered to the native speakers of such airines, it could be reinforced to the pilots the importance of some of the "lost" sounds on the airwaves.

An interesting point made by several ICAO docs with regards to ICAO assessment levels is that being a native speaker does not ensure that you would get level 6 in the test, some heavy regional accents from the UK, the states, Africa amd the carribean would only achieve a 5 or in some extreme cases a level 4.

The reason that this conversation appears to be going nowhere is the fact that both "sides" are not truely able to evaluate the system and seem to be stuck a little bit behind some false sense of national pride.

The sheer size of the USA and the relative volume of national traffic, has allowed for American RT to become more relaxed, in Europe, pilots are crossing borders every hour and meeting new accents, and dialects and as such, European pilots have a much more pressing need to follow the ICAO SARS than those domiciled in The USA. It is primarily the responsibility of ICAO and the FAA to address this, and to mandate the assessment of the individual airlines, and thus pilots communication skills, beyond what is neccesary to get an RT licence.

I hope that my script is coming accross fairly, and that neither nation feels picked upon here.

In keeping up with my objective approach, I am objectively pointing you to this famous video as a discussion point and not as a criticism of a specific nations controller


to what degree has the controller failed here? does his tone help an already flustered pilot? How could the controller have avoided this situation? There is a 2 way communication problem here, the pilot appears to have a poor comprehension of what is being asked, sure. Too what degree does tiredness, or dare I say fatigue also play a part here? I am fluent in Portuguese, but sometimes, first thing in the morning, I have some real comprehension problems, when I am pushed to answer something that I am still processing, I can give some bizarre responses too. My gut feeling is that if the controller took a breath, and repeated the question again, trying a second or third time in Standard Phraseology that the incident would have been over in 30 seconds and not in 106..........

It's getting late here, and it sounds like I have a nappy to change. I am very willing to discuss this subject more if anybody is interested in what I have to offer. If you have any questions or observations....... Please let me know

Thanks

This pilot should have been suspended for this, but it does not surprise me with Chinese pilots. Part of the problem is when they are in China both the pilots and the controllers speak Chinese. If they spoke English then this would improve their skills.
When dealing with pilots or controllers where English is their second language, it's a good idea to slow down a little on both sides. In this example I think you are going down the wrong road to even suggest what the controller should have done differently. It's clear that this pilot does not hold icao level 4 and whichever English Rater gave him that certificate they should be suspended too.

A point I would add is this is in New York, therefore this is going to be a big jet coming from China so these pilots 'should' be experienced and therefore with that experience you would expect a high standard of English, but this is clearly not the case. China is another accident waiting to happen.

What on earth for? He's done nothing wrong!

In the UK this would never happened, ATC never use the word "clear" or "cleared" unless they are clearing you to do something. Even with two native speakers this could cause problems when tired, late at night, other checks and things to run, clear and cleared are dangerous words to use when you are asking a question.

The controller was speaking very standard in the AC incident

One of the areas that may not help in the exchange between controller and pilots in the audio, is that the controller has an aggressive tone almost from the beginning(appreciate JFK is very busy) which naturally will cause the recipient to react in a confused or slightly subservient manner. Fault on both parties involved in that exchange IMHO.

That is not an agressive tone it is a NY brooklyn accent;)

:}That problem could have occurred in Blighty, or Oz or almost anywhere else that the Chinese fly to.
Having done some time training them, it became apparent that there is quite a disconnect between what they acknowledge on the r/t and what they really understand. Because their vocab is so limited, it is typical that they pick only words they want to hear.
Aviation English, as used in ATC, somehow needs to be condensed to maybe a maximum of 1000 words, contained within maybe 100 absolutely standard phrases. How we do this, I dunno, but until we do, problems will continue.

We have a classic of excess words in a typical line up clearance issued here in Oz. It goes something like: "behind the landing 737, line up behind and wait". This must be read back by the pilot. It could be condensed to: "Wait" or "Hold", then when the other aircraft has passed the holding point: "line up".
Also, rather than the phrase "hold short at....", how about "stop at...." and so on? If they really screw up, instead of some plea to hold position, try: "China....stop stop stop"

Whilst English is the accepted international language of aviation the degree of which is spoken, and more importantly understood, varies considerably around the world.

Having spent many years flying through international airspace and into countries where English is not the first language it became readily apparent that whilst ATC can handle the level of English for normal everyday operations when things go wrong the level understanding is a whole different ball game.

I remember one particular example at Japan’s Narita Airport during a night time departure for LAX when it all went wrong. The weather was deteriorating rapidly with increasing rain and lightning around the field. I had been cleared for take off on Runway 34, but by now we were experiencing heavy rain and the aircraft was being buffeted by strong wind gusts. One look at the aircraft’s radar showed solid red across the entire sweep.

I decided to delay my take-off and advised ATC of the reason. The reply was another clearance to take-off.

This was repeated three times before the message got through to the controller, and we were subsequently cleared to taxi down the runway and take the next taxiway right onto the parallel taxiway. Unfortunately this put us in conflict with three aircraft taxing for departure on the same taxiway. Each of these three aircraft were subsequently cleared to line up and depart but having taking one look at the weather off the end of the runway followed our own example.

In spite of all attempts to convey the weather problem to ATC by myself and the other three aircraft the lack of understanding appeared to be the main problem and it was only the final onslaught of the weather over the airport which got though to the controllers.

Unfortunately by now there was grid lock on the tarmac which took a couple of hours to sort out after the weather storm had passed.

RRN11 he should have been suspended because from that clear exchange his English is not at an icao level 4 or above, therefore he should not be allowed to fly until his English improves.
Unfortunately I do not know what capacity any ramp inspector has to do this. The ATC controller should have written up a report.

Having flown around the middle east and Europe alot the most incomprehensible English is the one spoken by the british ATC. Very rapid, alot of non standard phrases, the tonal level keeps oscillating up and down and most letters are not even pronounced. All i hear is "oaoaeo eaaoae oaeoo" scratching my head until reaching the gate.

On the other hand, the controller was not annunciating in a manner that would be clear to the Chinese crew, letting his frustration show and making his RT suffer. I fly in China a lot, and although a lot of the chat is Chinese, the English spoken is usually precise and absolute standard ICAO. Their controllers are drilled in it and IMHO, achieve a good standard considering the circumstances. It needs to be, for not only do many foreign carriers use Chinese airspace, many Chinese carriers employ foreign pilots or don't speak the state version of Mandarin Chinese (known as Putonghua).

I used to fly into JFK and Newark, and I think the standard of NY ATC is less than average - of the 4 TCAS RAs I have had in my career, two have been flying into JFK. I now fly into Beijing quite a bit, that too has it's challenges. But at least their use of ICAO standard English helps mitigate a lot of the threats.