Controllers and pilots are human, each with individual thought processes which
influence the way they interpret phrases and expressions. The ICAO-standard ATC
phraseologies are designed to minimise confusion but such a system is only effective
if used in every instance and, even then, miscommunication may occur. The minor
differences between ICAO and Royal Air Force phraseologies led to a Learjet crash in
the UK in 1996 (Morrow, 1997).
4.2 English—the International Language of Aviation
The post-World War 2 civil aviation industry was dominated by the English-speaking
nations, their aircraft manufacturers, and their pilots. Success of international civil
aviation depended upon standardisation of aviation procedures, of which
communications was one. Uplinger (1997) explains that in formulating its policy for
air traffic control language, ICAO recognised that many countries would wish to use
their own languages and so recommended communication in the language normally
used by the station on the ground. Somewhat equivocally, it recommended that
English be available at all control facilities serving international traffic—a provisional
measure until a more universal aviation language had been developed. Thus, while
English is not mandated by ICAO, fifty years on this ambiguous situation has resulted
in the de facto use of English as the international language of air traffic control.
English became the lingua franca for international aviation simply on the basis of
economic, geographic and cultural dominance. This process continues today as
Russia and China, which had not previously had reason to adhere to the English
language policy, launch major efforts to improve and expand the English language
skills of their controllers and pilots in a desire to open their airspaces to more
commercial traffic (Goertz, 1997). In Australia, CAR 184 (2) requires that all ATC
communications be in English unless arrangements have otherwise been arranged.
The ICAO spelling alphabet was the product of extensive research to choose a set of
words which would sound as different from each other as possible when spoken by
people whose native language was not English over noisy and degraded
communications channels (ICAO, 1993). Even so, Stewart (1992:56) writes that
“learning the form of R/T [radio telephony] terms and phrases and adapting to the
many speech peculiarities of countries is something like learning another language.
Sometimes there is difficulty in understanding the plain English used, especially in
such countries as Japan where pronunciation is a problem”. A poor understanding of
English by the Kazakh Ilyushin-76 crew has been repeatedly cited as having
contributed to the worst-ever mid-air collision when the freighter collided with a
Saudi B747 over India in November 1996, killing 349 people (Morrow, 1997). There
are many different versions of English so the problems of three different nationalities
speaking English to each other are obvious.
The level of English training that pilots and controllers require is currently the matter
of some dispute. Goertz (1997) feels that, because much of the critical information
that is passed is based on numbers and letters (e.g. callsigns, altitudes, flight levels,
radio frequencies, vectors, runways, wind velocities, etc.), a controller with a good
command of the ICAO phonetic alphabet and a limited number of standard phrases
28
can avoid many ATC/pilot miscommunication problems. But Uplinger (1997) argues
that the mastery of a specialised terminology is insufficient to avoid ambiguity.
Developing functionality in a foreign language is a difficult task, she says, and a pilot
or controller who knows 200-300 English ATC terms may have little functional
ability. Uplinger cites the case of the crash of American Airlines Flight 965 near
Cali, Columbia in December 1995. The Cali controller complained that he did not
have adequate English skills to resolve questions when the crew made illogical
statements about the aircraft’s position. The Boeing 757 killed 160 people when it
flew into a mountain.
The acquisition and use of language skills is complex and involves learning grammar,
pronunciation, intonation and usage. It extends to
the gleaning of further information from its nuances and subtleties, such as pauses,
hesitancies, slight variations in phraseology, excessively pedantic or rigorously
stereotyped message formats, acknowledgements that seem to lack understanding, minor
flaws in repeated messages, and other signs of unsureness or lack of confidence in the
speaker or listener. (Hopkin, 1995:131)
Apart from the phonemes mentioned earlier, Ericsson and Simon (1993) discuss the
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