ICAO publishes study on Phraseology

[ATC Watcher]

Why are there differences between FAA, UK CAA, Eurocontrol and Icao?

Because everyone beleives their views are better, or they have a bigger stick .

For instance the USA often refuses ICAO when it does not suit them :
a quote from a former FAA top executive during a famous meting on " line up and wait" : "we have 600.000 pilots and 20.000 controllers in the USA following good sound FAA procedures, you want me to tell them to change their ways because a UN organisation is saying so ? "

(for the young ones here, "UN" was a dirty word then in the USA, opposing Iraq intervention etc..)

[TonyDavis]

Because everyone beleives their views are better, or they have a bigger stick .

For instance the USA often refuses ICAO when it does not suit them :
a quote from a former FAA top executive during a famous meting on " line up and wait" : "we have 600.000 pilots and 20.000 controllers in the USA following good sound FAA procedures, you want me to tell them to change their ways because a UN organisation is saying so ? "

And that is the biggest problem we face. National stupidity. My answer to the above is that 25% of the world population is chinese and within a few short years they will have more pilots and controllers than the rest of the world put together, then throw in the Indian sub-continent. That kind of attitude from the FAA shows that they are incompetent to have a big say in how things are run because time and again the USA demonstrates its shameful lack of knowledge and understanding of the rest of the planet. The same applies to the UK CAA, only interested in national issues.

Lets just have one standard, one document and everybody stick to it.

[smiling monkey]

We had a US registered corporate jet fly in to Bali a few weeks ago with US crew and quite frankly no-one could understand their non-standard radio phraseology. He said something like 'on descent passing 20 point 1 down to 10' .. ATC and others on frequency like myself were wondering what the hell was he on about? And after landing and being told to contact ground on one one eight decimal eight, he goes off rattling on about not being able to contact 'eleven eighty eight eight.' Apparently he dialled up 118.88 and not 118.8 as directed .. Standard phraseology is already out there, but as the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

[Pontius]

Of 526 pilots who reported operating primarily in North America, 27 percent reported cases of non-standard phraseology

It would have been more but the other 73% had no idea of the phraseology standards, so didn't recognise standard from non-standard

[ray cosmic]

Then again - what IS exactly the standard? Depends who you're talking to. Hopeless. Certainly if one operates worldwide..

[aterpster]

The US AIM goes to great length to try to lead the horses to the stream:

Index of /aim

[Ancient Observer]

FAA Problem

For once, the French are not the only obstacles in this arena.

The FAA are a much bigger obstacle. Because they are charged with "Promoting" USA/American Aviation, they often speak with a very forked tongue.

If the FAA actually insisted that the USA airlines and pilots and atc actually followed ICAO rules, the political fallout in the USA would be against the FAA - and being good bureaucrats, they are keener on their jobs than they are on this aspect of International safety.

[aterpster]

Ancient Observor:

or once, the French are not the only obstacles in this arena.

The FAA are a much bigger obstacle. Because they are charged with "Promoting" USA/American Aviation, they often speak with a very forked tongue.

If the FAA actually insisted that the USA airlines and pilots and atc actually followed ICAO rules, the political fallout in the USA would be against the FAA - and being good bureaucrats, they are keener on their jobs than they are on this aspect of International safety.

That's why we have TERPs instead of the superior PANS-OPs. That was driven by the airlines, not the FAA.

Also, we don't have MVA charts for pilots unlike many other countires. That is because of the controllers' union and FAA air traffic management.

Having said all that, with my company at least, when a pilot bid international operations, the company did a decent job of teaching how to do things properly "over there." The experienced international line check airman filled in the gaps.

[A7700]

A smell of arrogance

It seems you have a very poor knowledge of the situation about this accident: First there are no ATCOs in the BEA organization and the conclusions are only reflecting the views of “super "pilots and engineers. When ATC gives the clearance to line up behind a departing aircraft in front of him, I would like to understand why the captain (And it was not his first time…) decide to line up after a landing traffic without listening to the copilot who told him that they were cleared only after a departing.!! (I am not sure a lot of people know but this captain suicide some months later…feeling somewhere guilty ???) And on top – not in the BEA report_ nothing about the fact that the SD330 flight strip was put on the controller strip board at a wrong place by someone who was not an ATCO and who report different versions between the BEA and the official judicial enquiries….

About the use of French for the departing traffic: At the time the T/O clearance was given to this MD80 flight nobody is able to assume that the crew of the SH330 was on the same frequency as they were first told to monitor only and the MD80 receive an early T/O clearance and stay longer on the runway to solve technical problems.
(From that time 90% of CDG runways incursions occurred when using a single language by ATC and intruders, and are mainly due to lack of job concentration of crews (Even some of them when listening after to their recorded read back not in line with their actions says that’s not what they were saying !!)

And on a more generic point of views:
Why French ATCOs should use a foreign learned language to talk to French speaking pilots, losing a lot of easy way to exchange compared to the use of their native language? ICAO said that the level of safety required in ATC do not need that a clearance send to a crew shall be “understood” – it should be more proper to say” heard”- by the other crews on the same frequency. Why a lot of ATC clearances shall repeated twice because crews report that they were busy with their flying tasks? No time to monitor? Because to understand the so called “situational awareness” a random listening of frequency is not enough, at list for an ATCO...may be not for “Super” pilot (The same that promotes silent Data link in ICAOs Working group!)
When ATC is performed by ATCOs and Pilot's tasks by pilots , cows are well guarded.
Then Why English language should be used? Can you give me a copy of the safety case performed by ICAO which says that it is the safest language to use for ATC? Or does the uS says if it's not adopted as such, we stop to fund ICAO ???
I am sure that German or Greek is much more concise and strict in a safety way!
Why British ALPA criticized the African ATC authorities in countries who have English as the official language for not speaking the “right English”? Is there more than one English? Which one shall be used in ATC
About which “English” are we speaking now? Where is the language academia that protects the integrity of vocabulary and grammar? You should read the Kent Jones (an American!) study about the use of English in civil aviation…
In fact safety is just an argument to hide the liberalism hand over on profit, especially in developed countries like in Europe. When Europe will privatized ATC I am sure that UK lobbyist will promote UK’s ATCOs because they have much more fluent “English” than the other. Forgetting in that worldwide story that they are only the poodles of the Americans..

[Icelanta]

Let us also not forget that the ONLY reason that English is Lingua Franca (sic.) in Aviation, is because the USA bribed Mexico to vote to make English the International ATC ICAO language. If not for this, Spanish would have been voted as the language to use...

[FLEXPWR]

I had an ICAO level 6 assessment signed by a british national JAA examiner, only to be turned down by another JAA member state where my license originated, because they used their own standards.

Are there different Englishes ...for sure!

The most frustrating to me is not the accent of a foreign operator, not even the difficulty in pronounciation from a non-English native, it is not even the non standard phraseology, no. It is the people who THINK they can speak and understand proper English, and speak as fast as possible, just to sound like you know what you're doing. In international operations, they are often the ones with the strongest accents, the poorest vocabulary, and the wrong attitude.

You can get a poor English speaker with a standard and slow speech, or a fluent, proficient speaker, maybe non standard, but with resources in vocabulary, making sure the message gets across as intended.

The report does not mention, the barriers to communication when some national language ATC controller REFUSES to speak English, until you threaten him to squawk 7600 and write a safety report. Talk about occupying the frequency! This happens for real, more than once. Try China for non standard...

[jxk]

On the basis of most used languages then Chinese ought to become the ICAO standard at some time in the future, although I would guess at the moment there are probably more movements conducted by English speaking teams, see below:

Most Widely Spoken Languages
in the World

Mandarin Chinese tops the list of most popular world languages, with over a billion speakers. English trails in third place, with just over 320 million speakers. This data includes all speakers of the languages, not only native speakers.

Language __ Approx. number

1. Chinese (Mandarin) 1,213,000,000
2. Spanish 329,000,000
3. English 328,000,000
4. Arabic 221,000,000
5. Hindi1 182,000,000
6. Bengali 181,000,000
7. Portuguese 178,000,000
8. Russian 144,000,000
9. Japanese 122,000,000
10. German 90,000,000

[FLEXPWR]

Yeah, cool, I want to live long enough to see everyone speak Chinese on ATC in Europe and the US, haha!

No doubt it is the most spoken language in the world, but even if I were to speak chinese fluently, there is no way I could ever read it. Here is a Chinese NOTAM (if your computer can display the font), enjoy.

B)1205221700

C)1212312359

E)新增临时障碍物: 在15/33 号跑道与16/34 号跑道之间扩建空管塔台. 施工塔吊位于33 号跑道入口以内1,794 米, 距33 号跑道中心线垂距748 米, 最高点海拔高度115.5 米, 摆臂半径为62 米, 摆臂海拔高度为103.5 米. 吊塔顶部及两侧已安装了航空障碍灯, 机组注意此处环境变化.

If you were not born and raised in China, it could take you 10 years to master the elementary 2000 symbols in daily language.

I learned English on my own in 1 year, with only a story book (Stephen King) and a voice recorder.

Since Russia has almost completely abandoned the alttitude in meters, Chinese Airspace remains one of the only regions operating in meters. Should we all revert to meters as well?

English has a very simple grammar, few exceptions, and with a total vocabulary of less than 400 words, you can get by in any country (except France of course, and China )

Last, even Chinese nationals cannot properly say a word they have never seen before in Chinese, because they are sinograms, and do not carry any clue about how to pronounce.

Give an English speaker any word he/she doesn't know, and 90% of the time they will say it correctly.

[Dan Winterland]

Statistics say one thing, the reality is often different. The term 'Mandarin Chinese' is largely negated by the fact there are so many Chinese dialects. In fact, technically, the majority of those speakers will be using Putonghua - the 'common language' which although is often referred to as 'Mandarin Chinese', isn't quite the same. The attempts to standardise the Chinese language came after the formation of the Republic of China in 1912 and the result was based on Mandarin Chinese spoken in the Beijng area and known as 'Guoyu'. After the civil war, the Communist party made further changes to encompass more of the population and the language changed more. People what is now of the Republic of China (Taiwan) will consider themselves to be Mandarin speakers and their dialect is very different to Putongua - to the extent thay often will not be able to understand each other. And this is the same for many of the other Chinese regional dialects. Someone from Chengdu will find it hard for himself to be understood in Shanghai. And although the Communist party tries to standardise Chinese still, there are big linguistic differences. Another statistic tells us there are about 800,000,000 Putonhua speakers, but not all of them can converse freely together.

ATC English is improving rapidly in China. A majority of my flying is done there and although I am used to it, I don't see the standards being as much of a threat as say, flying using meters. Putonghua is being used less and less on the airways, mainly due to the number of expat pilots, but partly due to regional dialects.

'Mandarin chinese' would not be suitable for general ATC use.

[Pika]

By ap08: "Do you seriously propose that a Russian who was born in Russia and is going to stay in Russia, suddenly HAS to learn another language than his own? BULL****, Russia has not been conquered by any english speaking country and therefore we will not make it compulsory to study foreign languages "as part of the learning curriculum". They are learned on a strictly voluntary basis and it will stay as such. You, or anyone else from your country, have no say in this matter."

I do agree with you that people who consciously and after long thought have decided agianst learning a certain language should be forced to do so.
However I do also think that htese people should be excluded from every job in aviation where they have a remote chance of ever having to deal with an international flight.
Yes that includes airport security, fueling and other ground staff including ATC.
In my opinion itīs simple: Speak English or get out of aviation.

BTW: I donīt see the connection between beeing conquered somewhen in that past and speaking a second language...

[jxk]

Further to my post #56, I see that as well as the 328,000,000 people that speak English as their first language there are a further 250,000,000 where it is their second language.

Very interested to know that English is considered easy to learn, has this been confirmed by a scientific study? And of course English is considered to be a 'living' language where new words are allowed into the lexicography.

[Capn Bloggs]

3. English 328,000,000

All English-speakers, including non-natives? There's 311m in the USA alone!

[2EggOmelette]

Its generally considered to be somewhere between 900,000,000 to 1 billion English speakers worldwide. 350,000,000 as a first language (or there about). Impossible to measure accurately of course. It is also the language used for engineering and commerce throughout the world.
Level of skill is really a redundant point though, as often its the accent that's impossible to understand. I've had Indian students with a low level of understanding of the language that are easier to comprehend than students from Wales or Yorkshire.
One thing I have learnt while living in France, its how to speak English (and here I thought being a native English speaker I knew that one pretty good. Wrong).
Speak clearly and concisely and you will be heard.
I wonder if the fact that many of us in the cockpit take pride is blabbing away as quickly as possible adds to the misunderstanding?

[Sunnyjohn]

Most Widely Spoken Languages
in the World

Which, as has already been pointed out, is not quite the same as throughout the world.

[Dan Winterland]

English is being used more and more as the international language of business. An example of that is the recent decision of the Milan Polythechnic to use it as their teaching medium. And ten years ago, English speakers were rare. Now you can find them everywhere. The increasing globalisation of business and industry requires a common communication medium, and those who can't use it will lose out.

In his book 'To rule the waves', Arthur Herman claims that it was on 15 July 1588 when events lead to English becoming the world's dominant language. The Royal Navy's final routing of the Spanish Armarda at the battle of Gravelines led to Spain's decline as the pricipal world power and the start of England's (later Britain's) dominance. Had the battle gone the other way, we would probably all be speaking Spanish on the airwaves!