No tongue in cheek at all, though I must admit it is a good point. But no, simply serious: ATC is a public service, and is run and operated by civil servants, in most countries. They needn’t care tuppence about safety (though many do, by conscience and by professional pride), they apply procedures as trained and published. Yes, one CAN and SHOULD ask questions about the quality of said training and said procedures – but doesn’t that apply to almost all public services in almost all countries?
That would seem to be an excuse for e.g. a hospital to just kill everybody who gets admitted.
Well, if someone completely unacquainted with local language and traditions turns up in a hospital, with a serious issue, the risk of dying due to lack of communications is very real, I’m afraid. History must have many examples. But “everybody” sounds like exaggerated. Hospitals seem to do quite well, on average, at least round here. As does ATC.
Aviathor wrote:
Monday morning quarterback. I think she did good. Not everyone is a native English speaker, and soon we will all have to learn Chinese anyway.
I think Tumbleweed was referring to the original post, not the video posted by bosco. And I would totally agree.
I have just watched most of that video.
At least 50% of the audio track is illegible! The controller’s English pronounciation is terrible. If she was in a UK shop asking for 1kg of bananas, most people would not understand her. She gets away with it only because nearly everybody there is an airline pilot, flying the sector several times a day.
And most of the pilots are speaking very badly (borderline illegibly) too, but that’s normal and nobody seems to care.
No wonder there are problems.
The system hangs together only because most people are very current and know what they are doing, so they pretty well know what everybody else is saying.
Peter wrote:
At least 50% of the audio track is illegible! The controller’s English pronounciation is terrible
Sorry Peter, have to disagree. To me, perfectly understandable. Certainly better than a lot of UK ATC (especially ‘Up North’….). As for going to buy a kg of Bananas in the UK – English isn’t gonna cut it, try Urdu….
The above said, I agree with the the system hangs together only because most people are very current and know what they are doing, so they pretty well know what everybody else is saying. comment. IMHO this is also why English should be the only language used in aviation. You know what to expect, even if your own commandf of it is limited.
172driver wrote:
You know what to expect, even if your own commandf of it is limited.
However, that’s also a pitfall. We sometimes interpret what we hear as what we expected when it was something different or really too illegible to be sure.
I don’t think you need to be that proficient to catch incorrect phraseology. Even if that’s all you know, you’ll know when you hear something different. And it won’t really help you with bad accents or poor transmissions. Maybe they let it slip more (perhaps a lot of locals are a bit sloppy and they want to be friendly), maybe they aren’t that confident in the language to correct others, who knows.
I don’t know how it’s elsewhere, but AFAIK it’s not easy to find controllers. Plenty of people are interested (a well paid job), but few make it through selection and training (which takes I think two years full time) and some even after that find out they can’t take it, the pressure of being responsible for other lives.
Peter wrote:
At least 50% of the audio track is illegible!
It might be worthwhile to check your computers speakers. I had absolutely no problem to understand her. The only issue is that the first few 100ms of each transmission was cut off, but that may be due to the recording receiver’s squelch circuitry.
Peter wrote:
The controller’s English pronounciation is terrible.
Yes, she has a very slight french accent, but calling this “terrible pronunciation” is IMO quite arrogant…
Peter wrote:
The controller’s English pronounciation is terrible
What?
No idea what you are used to but her command of English is very good. Her accent only started to come through when she was clearly shaken by the incident and inquiring wheather the Aer Lingus was all right. Yet she kept her professional cool and defused the situation as she should have. I had NO problem understanding her even through a PC speaker.
If anything the guy who replaced her (last exchange on the tape) had a much more pronounced accent.
I am flying here as you know and I have never ever encountered an ATCO in Switzerland who has a bad command of English or an accent which makes understanding him or her difficult.
That incident was a VERY close shave indeed. The Aer Lingus A320 actually had to maneuver on the runway in order to get past the intruder safely, something I’ve never seen or heard of before. They were VERY lucky indeed.
Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
But no, simply serious: ATC is a public service, and is run and operated by civil servants, in most countries.
That is what you would wish, but the situation is changing. See e.g. ACR. They operate the towers of almost half of Swedish controlled civil airports. According to their website they plan to expand into continental Europe in cooperation with skyguide, which is already a joint-stock company, although wholly owned by the Swiss government.
Peter wrote:
At least 50% of the audio track is illegible! The controller’s English pronounciation is terrible.
I been wondering if (good) non-native speakers of English are more tolerant to accented pronunciation than native speakers? (I know of course that Peter is not technically a native speaker, but for practical purposes I would say he is.)
I was surprised that the Shamrock continued the take-off. Were they already past v1 when they passed the bizjet? My understanding is that v1 and vr are usually very close on modern medium-distance airliners.
