Hallo Proceed,

Salzkorn is a young woman :p and she is not from Alsace :)

London ATC have always sounded like they had their heads in a bucket of cotton wool. You turn the volume up to hear them then get deafened by the next aircraft to transmit. Scottish on the other hand are crisp and sharp...must be the whiskey! Hoped for 21st century comms with the new centre, but it is just the same.
We have a $180m wonderjet with the cheapest headsets on the market, expect London ATC have the same.

They sound OK to me.

Excusez-moi, Mademoiselle, but shouldn't it be salzkorne then? :)

Regarding (English as) the international language ...

Last time I flew to the UK I had to concentrate to fully understand British English. For a non-english native speaker different dialects matter more than one would think (England, Scotland, Ireland, New Yawk etc.) . But it is not only English; it took me longer than expected to flawlessly understand Canadian ATC en francais . Y espanol? Forget it, when you fly over Cuba. I need to talk to them in English.

I know I am missing the point here a bit :rolleyes: , but I thought it was worth bringing it up.

Whenever I return to the UK and call London ATC, I always breathe easier, knowing I've returned to the best air traffic control in the world. They do a great job, under a lot of pressure, and always seem to have plenty of spare capacity.

This equally applies to all the UK ATC facilities, not just London.

I don't know any pilot who doesn't feel the same. Keep up the good work.

:cool:

Just when you thought this one was dead.......
Squawk 7777, the link you requested is here
Rather large reports, but full of interesting information about delays (and more).
Remember folks, the people at the sharp end are working their butts off, so blame something else, not them!

Thanks bigears!!!

One more question though, where or who is the best place to summit your complains to? I understand that you guys are working very hard to accomodate us unpatient pilots :rolleyes: so I suppose it is time we should ring up upper management ....

I couldn't agree more Squawk777.....yes, please DO get in touch with Management, but if you want to get somewhere, go RIGHT TO THE TOP !!!

The man to contact is Mr Richard Everitt......don't go to anyone else, as the whole bunch of upper management within NATS isn't worth tuppence !!!

However, I am sad to say I am unsure of how you DO get in touch with him. I hope someone might know the contact reference, or even his email address ?

From the NATS website, no less.........Customer Contact Guide .

Worst in Europe ???? Says who ??

That is horse manure ! I'd say it's by far the best although I think privatizing was a big mistake.
Keep on boys and girls, you're doing a terrific job. Just hope you'll still get the means to keep it that way.

It doesn't matter who's the best and who's the worst, we need to get everyone in Europe up to the same standard as 'the best' in order to prevent the sort of accident that happened to the Streamline shed 2-3 years ago at CDG where someone actually died because of the language problem.

I understand that it was tentatively agreed that English would be spoken at CDG because of this accident and AF agreed but the French regionals put their feet down and insisted on retaining the right to speak French. Nice to know that a life wasn't lost in vain!

The standard of ATC across Europe is, in my opinion, improving. There are definate black spots like Greece and some areas of the Iberian Peninsula, been into Madrid on 18R lately? However, things are improving. I operate out of LGW where I think the single runway operation and the slickness and the professionalism of the team on the ground is incredible. I'm sure there are numerous examples of this all over Europe, I hope so anyway. It seems that until we take the politics out of air safety and by that I mean National interest as well we will never end up with a truly common standard across Europe, maybe a common Eurocontrol agency and centralised control is the only way it could be achieved.

Atropos

Sorry mate, do not agree with you. This poor fellow lost his life 2 years ago mainly because aircrafts were then allowed to line up from taxiways where they didn't have full view of what was coming from the threshold. They've put a stop to it. That the language may have been a contributing factor can be debated until the cows come home. Canada for one thing operate on a 2 languages basis, spanish speak spanish, italians.........etc.
The use of english in CDG wasn't abandoned for the sole reason of regional lobbies but because it was just havock and dangerous. You suddenly had french people unable to understand each other ( not that do when they speak french but that's another story ) and that made things really dangerous. I know, I was there. Added to that, you're right, the unavoidable twitt who lives in the stone age backed up by a very stupid law, voted years ago that just made it plain illegal.
It would take a politician with balls ( a contradiction in terms ) to scrap that law and it bet you it will still be there long after I eat the daffodills by the root.