Today Tonight and Foreign Pilots
 

Just turned on the TV and caught the end of a preview for next weeks show, supposedly a special of how with 70 million passengers in the sky each year the potential for tragedy is high! It seems like its going to be basically having a go at the large number of foreign pilots in the sky and how they are all not able to be understood by the controllers, and the program comes with real recordings of pilot communication! Another must see!

I'll be interested to see what they really make of this and where they got the idea from?

On the other hand, whenever i have listened to my scanner you do hear a few unreadable communications along with controllers getting a bit short with the pilots when they don't respond/misunderstand the messages. But i think they may be blowing this a little bit out of the water and i think these sort of programs are designed to put negative thoughts into peoples heads.

Usual disclaimer here, just my opinion and im not an aviation expert and it may very well endanger the lives of the 70million passengers.

Be interested to see what others think on the topic.

Cheers

Gerard

Gerard,

Today Tonight is notorious for sensationalist reporting but it is a major issue in the industry as brought up recently with Garuda- the Yogyakarta crash etc.

I have a personal experience - when i went overseas to Hong Kong from Syd at the end of March I happened to be in the queue at customs with the 4 China Eastern pilots operating MU566 to Shanghai and had a chat to them.

What I say is in no way tweaked in the fact that it was more like speaking to a brick wall than an airline pilot- and no disrespect meant here but I asked basic things like what plane they would be flying- a333 model (said it in a very slow manner) and they proceeded to tell me their time of departure. Also asked them about their ranks and just didnt respond and various other questions made me glad I was not on their flight and deeply concerned about certain foreign pilots flying into our skies. The pilots were aged between what looked like 20/30s to the captain who looked in 50s.

I was just gobsmacked that these people could be commanding an airliner with 200+ people onboard but unfortunately thats the state of affairs.

So Today Tonight will overdo it like always:) but in some respects I believe they are absolutely correct.

If anyone has any real doubts about what I say above I urge you to go to Sydney Intl T1 and see for yourself some of the foreign pilots.

Sorry i forgot to add that i think it was being emphasized that it was the student pilots that from the way they portrayed it as that if they had an accent.

I have also heard the professional int. pilots repeatedly missing the frequency to change to.

I don't know does the quality of the radio affect whether transmissions are unreadable? Especailly if there is a non-english accent to be had as well?

Got to say though, some of these programs are almost as good at sensationalizing stories as some newspapers.

They should take a listen to SF approach when the "fleet from the east" show up in the early mornings to do their part in trying the controllers patience while they deal with all the domestic movements. Better still is clearance delivery starting around 11am when they are reading back the info they have just been given....pretty funny (except if you are awaiting your clearance)

MS

It is certainly an interesting topic, with as usual there will be an emphasis on the Asian airlines, which I believe is somewhat silly. There are plenty of countries in Europe that supposedly speak English, but they still have major communication issues.

I am not suggesting they are perfect, but certainly China is making an effort to improve their English, and although some of the pilot's "conversational" English isn't upto scratch, their "Aviation" English is, in most cases reasonably good.

They can fly over dozens of countries from China to Europe, and through the use of basic aviation language do so successfully.

The countries they have the problems are places like Australia and the US, where there is a widespread use of phrases that are not ICAO, and so the crew do not know them. I have sat on the ground at LAX and listened to a controller get extremely frustrated that the Chinese crew couldn't read back his instructions properly, when none of us on our crew could understand the clearance either! I have also listened to a Sydney controller chastise a Chinese carrier because they elected to stop on the taxiway after being given a confusing taxi clearance. Yes, they did what every pilot is trained to do, and all the controller did was continue to repeat the clearance over and over, when it was clearly confusing the crew. In this instance, and the one in LA, it is clearly the controllers fault... the crew are doing what they are trained to do, and the controller, instead of finding a better, or different, way of explaining their instruction, they just abuse the crew instead.

So whilst I'd say that airlines around the world do need to improve their English skills, the communication issues can be improved on both sides of the microphone.

I bet you'll never see a story about that though, it's just not juicy enough! Easier to bash pilots with poor english.

Like you said Owen, they may not be fluent in English but they know their aviation terminology and can navigate successfully accross the globe.

And why do controllers continue to be allowed to use non-ICAO terminology? Or is that an acceptable practice?

Can someone give me some examples of what non-ICAO phrases would be?

I have also heard Richmond tower get extremely short with an American pilot trying to tell him the POB, took about 7 different attempts to get 11 POB out! So clearly some english speaking accents are just as undeciferable as asian accents.

From NZAA tower yesterday .... "line up behind the green machine".

One assumes the green machine was ZK-FRE.

often used at Sydney.

"Singapore 220 line up and wait behind the landing dash 8 Runway 34L behind".

Have not seen this in use at many other airports.

Sorry Matt, but as far as I'm aware, that is an ICAO phrase. I've heard it used at every controlled airport I've travelled into.

I'm often out flying in the middle of the night, when a lot of the International Airline's are coming and going from our shores. A lot of the time, the Asian airlines are quite good with their 'aviation english', and aren't very hard to understand at all. And provided the controller's keep the phraseology nice and standard, then there's generally not a problem. After all, that's why it's 'standard phraseology', so that it cuts down the difficulty for non-english speaking countries. In fact, some of the worst offenders with being difficult to understand, are the American's! Sometimes you wonder if they have even heard of standard phraseology. The French are probably just as bad when flying around France. Pity any english speaking crew flying there, because they wouldn't be able to understand anything the French controllers are saying to the French aircraft.

Matt, the conversation you eluded to that you had with a non-english speaking crew, could be in effect reversed for say an Australian crew in China, and a Chinese person trying to converse with them in Chinese. Do you really think unless the Aussie was fluent in Chinese, he would be able to converse any better than you did with the aforementioned crew??

Must have been a slow week for stories at Today Tonight, because this is the most ludicrous story I've heard for a while.

Mick