Mayday missed at LHR because of poor English
 

The Grauniad: Plane's mayday call missed due to pilot's poor English

Air traffic controllers at Heathrow airport failed to understand two distress calls from an Italian airliner carrying 104 people because the pilot's English pronunciation was poor. A report published today will reveal that the Alitalia jet suffered a near complete loss of its navigational equipment in its final approach to London.

The control tower did not understand a mayday message from the plane's captain and did not initiate usual procedures, which include putting the airport fire service on alert and clearing the runway. Although the plane, which flew from Milan, landed safely the incident is likely to prompt concern about the quality of English spoken in cockpits. Low-cost airlines are looking increasingly far afield to recruit crew, who routinely speak English as a second or third language.

The Air Accidents Investigation Branch said the Alitalia Airbus A320 left Italy last year with one of its navigation systems out of order. On the plane's final approach to Heathrow, a second navigational system failed and the landing was aborted.

While circling the pilot transmitted an emergency message known as a "pan-pan" call and reported the failure. But air traffic controllers did not understand until another aircraft intervened. The report said the pilot had to land manually on a "point and shoot" basis and transmitted a more serious mayday call asking for priority.

The report said: "The mayday element of this call was not heard by the controller. This was probably due to a combination of the commander not announcing the mayday using the expected protocol and his heavily accented English, rather than any failing within air traffic control."

Language skills of aircraft crew have become an issue in the industry as budget airlines have scrambled to find staff for rapidly growing fleets.

A spokesman for the British Airline Pilots Association said: "Balpa is concerned whenever there is a case of English not being properly spoken or understood. There are sometimes cases like this, although thankfully they're very rare." He said there was a back-up system in most jets allowing pilots to use an electronic distress "squawk" instead.

An Alitalia spokeswoman said the incident did not put passengers' safety at risk.

"point and shoot"
:)
I like that one.

Maybe with this I can wake everyone up a little more. I've been pushing for years that proper aviation English be taught to operational personnel. The new standards here are being ignored by almost all, except the people who actually have to use it....hughesyd...know what I mean now????:ugh:

Watching Top Gun doesn't make you a pilot, nor does it teach you the proper language skills.

Best to all,
PE

Maybe we should also do some practice Pans next time we are going into LHR ? :}

:D
Good "man". This is also part of aviation English.

Best,
PE

How many native English speakers actually speak aviation English? Very few, if any, I would suggest.

Actually, from what I have researched, the British ATC at London Heathrow and Gatwick are among the best. This is what I have heard in my experience.

I am an advocate for lobbying the FAA and other "native" speaking countries on the need to not only break the ba...errr..backs of the non-native speakers to get their acts together on the airwaves regarding radiotelephony standards/aviation English but also to instruct monolingual speakers of the needs and necessities of a standard aviation or International English on the frequencies.

What are your opinions?

I would appreciate your responses,
Regards,
PlaneEnglish

Since when is Alitalia a budget airline scrambling for staff?? I think they have too many and are in the process of getting rapidly smaller!! :=

Actually I think the LHR controllers do a fantastic job, although it sounds like they have a metal bucket over their head while transmitting.:}
For pure clearness, my experience -as a non-native English speaker- gives the highest score to the Germans.

I speak a very high level of English for a non native English person. However I have been caught out a few times by the controllers in the UK using expressions which are only known to native English speakers. And outside the London sector there are a number of controllers who have a heavy accent of their own, be it in English.

Yes offcourse we all need to have the proper level of English. But just pointing the finger at the foreigners is not just the solution. It strikes me that every time this issue pops up here, it is the guys that have no other language but there own, that are very critical about the foreigners. It is essential that we start working the problem, with simple r/t. Also some of the London controllers may want to slow down their rate of speech to say 100 words per minute, instead of the odd 200 I get sometimes. And yes we do need language course as part of the pilot program for non native speakers. (maybe we can exchange it for some of that great stuff about binaire counting system, or the function of scramjets.....).

Again these are no excuses for the case described above, but the problem goes a lot deeper then simply an Italian with a heavy accent. I do know NATS is taking this issue very seriously, given the recent publications on this issue.

Thanks for your understanding!

(go on then, tell me how many spelling errors in this post.... :E )

Far, far fewer than many native English speakers, Fortuna. I am very envious of you.

In my experience, on the whole foreign pilots speak very good english, it's just a very small minority that need to improve. I try to slow down for non-native speakers and use less instructions because you are aware that they don't speak english as their first language.

First of all, your English is better than some native English speakers, I put my spell-check to test every day. :O

There are linguistic studies on monolingual speakers not being effective communicators. (Listen to President Bush!) As I wrote before, I feel all aviation personnel should be taught in aviation English procedures. I have spoken to authorities about this and make my voice heard at all meetings. I think that the FAA is researching it. I know that they are aware.

ICAO says the standard radiotelephony procedures do not cover all areas of operations, i.e. unusual/abnormal operations. So, all these situations for aviation "plain language" as ICAO call it should be taught to ALL aviation personnel regardless of their native tongue.

I know a school that is specializd in teaching aviation English did proficiency testing on a native English speaker. This aviation operational employee was rated a level three (pre-operational) on the ICAO rating scale. It is awareness by all, especially those who speak English as a native langauge to make themselves clear. Miscommunications happen every day, everywhere.

PE

The other day I received a company safety bulletin with in it a 3 minute quiz from NATS regarding RT.
Funny thing was, the answers provided were quite different from what I learned in school in the Netherlands 10 years ago.

Examples:
line up clearance behind landing:
me: xx1234 behind landing short final line up 09 and wait behind
NATS expects: behind landing on short final line up and wait 09 xx1234

me: level one-hundred
NATS expects: level one-zero-zero

And a couple more of these..

As soon as I find the thing back I'll try to provide more of these..
I'm trying to say that even the basics are apparently different!

The section of the US Government responsible for RT is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), not the FAA. I was amused to see my German RT licence annotated 'Issued on the basis of FAA licence number...' which was total BS.

There I had to do a rather thorough test in order to use German, done with the Ministry for Post and Telecommunications. That involved a run-through of an imaginary CVFR flight from Hannover to Bremen, from calling for start-up to parking on the ramp at destination. For an American RT licence I just had to send in a little postcard which came back stamped. Full marks to the Germans on this one.

I just did the British RT test, again with an imaginary flight. Of the two the German test was more thorough but the British one would suffice, I guess.

There was a high-profile crash at Kennedy a few years ago when a crew from South America ran out of fuel. The report had the Captain, with no English, unable to get the FO to call a Mayday, so that they were given normal vectors instead of priority handling. That one was not strictly down to lack of English but it must have been a major factor.

The running joke down in south Florida was the guys up at Opa-Locka, trainees from the Americas. Every so often the tower would instruct one to hold short when he would just reply, 'Royer!' and give it the berries. I found one wandering around, terminally bewildered, on short finals for 09L at Miami International when he must have been looking at Krome Avenue and the vastness of the Glades without looking the other way to see a rather large international airport!

Nigeria, a few years ago, had to tell a few guys to go back home to eastern Europe when it seemed that their English was too scanty, so it's not just a problem in the developed world.

The report leaves open questions to me.

ATC did not reply to this request nor was the request passed on to the next sector. The specific nature of the failure is certainly not a requirement to issue a clearance as requested.

In the absence of any reply from ATC the crew carried out the standard missed approach procedure.

Despite a later decision to expedite the approach and accept a long low speed vector with high R/T load the original intention of the crew was to resolve a problem in a holding pattern with reduced distraction.

You sure about that one?

FL100, spoken as one (wun?) hundred, is correct phraseology at my NATS unit.

I wrote this on another thread.

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=228707
It seems to be relative to location...

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Dear H Peacock,
It seems there are differences in the transmission of FL. CAP413 (edition 16 dated 1 September 2004) states on page 31,
1.4.2.a) When transmitting messages containing aircraft callsigns, altimeter settings, flight levels (with the exception of FL 100, 200, 300 etc. which are expressed as ‘Flight Level (number) HUN DRED’), headings, wind speeds/directions, pressure settings, transponder codes and frequencies, each digit shall be transmitted separately
Whereas ICAO in their The Manual of Radiotelephony (Third edition dated 2006) on page 21,2.4.2 reads,
All numbers, exept as specified 2.4.3, shall be transmitted by pronouncing each digit separately. (2.4.3. specifies for altitude, runway visual range, visibility, cloud height to be pronounced [number] hundred).
I teach my students the CAP 413 communications standards but prepare them for both by using listening exercises with real transmissions where both are used. I have one dandy specimen (isn't there someone crying on one of these threads that scanners are illegal?) of an approach ATC native speaker of English saying, "cleared to FL [number] hundred, FL [number]-zero-zero". This is interesting seeing that he used this method only with non-native speaking pilots. With both American and British pilots he only used "[number] hundred ".
I hope I have cleared the air for you on all levels.

A question for you H Peacock,
I am still trying to understand the NATO Alphabet for the letter "P". In Australia last week I heard PaPah but in most transmissions I have heard it is pronounced "Papa". Any help you can give me?

Thanks,

Regards,
Plane English

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Last edited by planeenglish : 3rd June 2006 at 23:02.


Best,
PE

FL 100 spoken as one (wun?) hundred is correct in the UK - but not standard ICAO phraseology.

Ref Supplement submitted by UK to ICAO Annex 10, VOL 2.