In Spain I often hear CAT pilots (obviously on IFR flight) speaking in Spanish while for Italy I don’t remember I’ve ever heard Italian in IFR operations. I’m clueless about France on this topic because I hardly understand any word so I can’t even guess the type of operation.
@ Peter wrote "That’s interesting, given that France has a law requiring French pilots (whatever that means) to use French for ATC comms in France, for VFR and IFR.
The following is what the AIP says:-
“Important note 1 : In France, it is possible to use the French language in radiotelephony on all aerodromes, including airports with more than 50 000 international IFR movements per year.
French for ATC comms in France
Except as required for practice. And we all need plenty of practice, don’t we?
At Cannes I’d say French pilots are 50/50 EN/FR. Getting to a decent level of “aviation English” is a struggle for new French pilots, so they do genuinely need to practice.
I flew out of LFMD a long while ago and it was ironic that I was the only pilot on freq who was speaking French!
Emir wrote:
for Italy I don’t remember I’ve ever heard Italian in IFR operations
I’ve heard plenty of Italian IFR traffic speak Italian with the controllers.
In Geneva it’s a funny rule, where they are only allowed to speak with you in French below FL250.
Ibra wrote:
You need to speak French, there is no level of proficiency nor certificate required nor mention on licence
Funfact on this topic. I am Italian but I got my licence in France, doing all the training and tests in French. My licence does mention French proficiency but they only gave me level 4 (therefore with an expiration date) by default for the only reason that I am not French, even though I could easily get level 6 if tested.
It is not yet clear to me if I will ever have to renew it after it expires and what would happen if I didn’t. I have the FCL.055 level 6 so I could fly for an indefinite time anyway and I suppose no one would check if my French proficiency has been renewed when landing at small airfields after doing the comms in French. I have sent an email to the DGAC and so far I have received no answer (but it was only about 2 months ago so still within their average response time 
).
On the website of the ministry of transportation, there is no mention of a French proficiency test for pilots.
It will be interesting to see what happens for me if and when I eventually figure out how to get a French PPL under the new rules. I’m a French citizen, but not French by birth. I could easily get level 6, I guess (as long as it doesn’t involving listening to ATC!) but there doesn’t appear to be any need.
I thought that of you did your PPL in France and you used French language during the test you automatically got a VFR level 6 French language proficiency, until I read @Seba’s post.
The other method used to be if it is your maternal language you got level 6 but maybe things have changed.
johnh wrote:
It will be interesting to see what happens for me if and when I eventually figure out how to get a French PPL under the new rules. I’m a French citizen, but not French by birth. I could easily get level 6, I guess (as long as it doesn’t involving listening to ATC!) but there doesn’t appear to be any need.
If you are a French citizen you will get level 6 automatically.
The funny thing is that the expiration date is only in the “language proficiency” section, whereas the “radiotelephony privileges” section mentions that I have French and English privileges and that has no expiry date. That means that at some point I might have French radiotelephony privileges without having French proficiency.
gallois wrote:
I thought that of you did your PPL in France and you used French language during the test you automatically got a VFR level 6 French language proficiency, until I read @Seba’s post.
The other method used to be if it is your maternal language you got level 6 but maybe things have changed.
They give level 4 by default to non-French citizens, no matter how good your French is. I already knew it would happen as the guy who oversaw my FCL.055 test (before the PPL checkride) noticed that I was not French and warned me that my French proficiency on the licence would not be a level 6.
