Interesting article in today's FT
Foreign pilots are failing at English — but so are the Brits
Michael Skapinker, FT
https://www.ft.com/content/c4012d50-186b...09f373be87
Foreign pilots are failing at English — but so are the Brits
Michael Skapinker, FT
https://www.ft.com/content/c4012d50-186b...09f373be87
“Air disaster fears over foreign pilots’ poor English skills”, reads one of several headlines about a UK study on the flight crews and air traffic controllers who have failed to master the aviation industry’s global language.
In one unnamed country, pilots are receiving the required International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Level Four English certificate after just 10 days of tuition. The study into 267 reported incidents over 18 months says that misunderstandings in English between air traffic controllers and flight crew have caused pilots to follow the wrong departure procedures or fly their aircraft too close to each other.
These errors could have led to catastrophic accidents, and UK news organisations are right to be alarmed. But most relegated to just a sentence or two one of the study’s main findings: British pilots and air traffic controllers “play a significant part in language-related miscommunication”.
Large chunks of the 91-page report (http://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAP1375%20Mar17.pdf), commissioned by the UK Civil Aviation Authority, says that while foreign pilots and controllers need to improve their English, so do their British counterparts.
Native English speakers think they speak the language well enough not to need any lessons in it. In the aviation industry, that is dangerously complacent. The CAA report says that British pilots and air traffic controllers are causing misunderstandings by using slang and everyday conversational English, rather than the established terms of English as an aviation lingua franca.
English-speaking pilots and controllers also cause problems by speaking too quickly, especially under stress, and by failing to establish that non-English speakers have heard numbers correctly, the report says.
While some non-English speaking pilots are being given the ICAO Level Four certificate by corrupt testers, native English speakers frequently receive the top Level Six qualification without any test at all.
Resolving in-air communication lapses requires action by both sides. Testing and training of foreign pilots needs to be more rigorous — and native English speakers need to undergo a perceptual shift many will find hard. The report says the airline industry needs to “emphasise to native English-speaking pilots and controllers that they are not the ‘owners’ of English”.
This is a lesson that extends beyond the airline industry. And for many in the UK, which is undergoing a tense separation from the EU, and in the US, where the talk is of building walls and putting “America first”, it is an unwelcome one.
But it is a reality. Language experts calculate (https://www.ft.com/content/87d8c7ec-fe7c...00c5664d30) that for every person speaking English as a mother tongue, there are now four speaking it as a second or additional language. Most English conversations around the world, whether in aviation, business or tourism, take place between non-native speakers.
It is not just in the airline industry that non-native speakers often find it difficult to understand Brits, Americans or Australians. Business people tell researchers that their English language conference call was going fine until a Canadian or New Zealander came on to the line.
The problem is the same one identified in the CAA report: native English speakers talk too fast, use too many metaphorical expressions and, because so many of them these days are monolingual, have no idea what it is like to operate (https://www.ft.com/content/26692848-f59b...683b5e52db) in another language.
“Both native and non-native English speakers must accept responsibility for their utterances, and ensure that they are speaking as clearly and concisely as possible,” the report says.
Lack of precision can cause misunderstanding even between native English speakers. Just before an Eastern Airlines aircraft crashed while coming in to land in Miami in 1972, the flight crew were having problems with the nose gear. Air traffic controllers asked: “How are things comin’ along up there?” The pilots thought the controllers were talking about the nose gear. They were not. They were talking about the aircraft’s unauthorised loss of altitude.
The CAA report says native English-speaking and non-native pilots and controllers all need training in simplifying their speech and avoiding redundant information. Rather than falling back on their own language knowledge, they need to use “the existing aviation phraseology”.
Headlines about cheating foreigners may scratch an itch in these fraught times. Keeping the skies safe, and communicating effectively in other industries too, requires an effort from all of us.
In one unnamed country, pilots are receiving the required International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Level Four English certificate after just 10 days of tuition. The study into 267 reported incidents over 18 months says that misunderstandings in English between air traffic controllers and flight crew have caused pilots to follow the wrong departure procedures or fly their aircraft too close to each other.
These errors could have led to catastrophic accidents, and UK news organisations are right to be alarmed. But most relegated to just a sentence or two one of the study’s main findings: British pilots and air traffic controllers “play a significant part in language-related miscommunication”.
Large chunks of the 91-page report (http://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAP1375%20Mar17.pdf), commissioned by the UK Civil Aviation Authority, says that while foreign pilots and controllers need to improve their English, so do their British counterparts.
Native English speakers think they speak the language well enough not to need any lessons in it. In the aviation industry, that is dangerously complacent. The CAA report says that British pilots and air traffic controllers are causing misunderstandings by using slang and everyday conversational English, rather than the established terms of English as an aviation lingua franca.
English-speaking pilots and controllers also cause problems by speaking too quickly, especially under stress, and by failing to establish that non-English speakers have heard numbers correctly, the report says.
While some non-English speaking pilots are being given the ICAO Level Four certificate by corrupt testers, native English speakers frequently receive the top Level Six qualification without any test at all.
Resolving in-air communication lapses requires action by both sides. Testing and training of foreign pilots needs to be more rigorous — and native English speakers need to undergo a perceptual shift many will find hard. The report says the airline industry needs to “emphasise to native English-speaking pilots and controllers that they are not the ‘owners’ of English”.
This is a lesson that extends beyond the airline industry. And for many in the UK, which is undergoing a tense separation from the EU, and in the US, where the talk is of building walls and putting “America first”, it is an unwelcome one.
But it is a reality. Language experts calculate (https://www.ft.com/content/87d8c7ec-fe7c...00c5664d30) that for every person speaking English as a mother tongue, there are now four speaking it as a second or additional language. Most English conversations around the world, whether in aviation, business or tourism, take place between non-native speakers.
It is not just in the airline industry that non-native speakers often find it difficult to understand Brits, Americans or Australians. Business people tell researchers that their English language conference call was going fine until a Canadian or New Zealander came on to the line.
The problem is the same one identified in the CAA report: native English speakers talk too fast, use too many metaphorical expressions and, because so many of them these days are monolingual, have no idea what it is like to operate (https://www.ft.com/content/26692848-f59b...683b5e52db) in another language.
“Both native and non-native English speakers must accept responsibility for their utterances, and ensure that they are speaking as clearly and concisely as possible,” the report says.
Lack of precision can cause misunderstanding even between native English speakers. Just before an Eastern Airlines aircraft crashed while coming in to land in Miami in 1972, the flight crew were having problems with the nose gear. Air traffic controllers asked: “How are things comin’ along up there?” The pilots thought the controllers were talking about the nose gear. They were not. They were talking about the aircraft’s unauthorised loss of altitude.
The CAA report says native English-speaking and non-native pilots and controllers all need training in simplifying their speech and avoiding redundant information. Rather than falling back on their own language knowledge, they need to use “the existing aviation phraseology”.
Headlines about cheating foreigners may scratch an itch in these fraught times. Keeping the skies safe, and communicating effectively in other industries too, requires an effort from all of us.
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