Air safety board questions the English ability of China Southern Airlines pilots
March 29th, 2009 by James
A Japanese air safety board investigating a 2007 incident in which a China Southern Airlines plane that entered a runway without permission has determined that the poor English ability of the Chinese pilot and copilot were the cause of the mistake:
In its report, the Japan Transport Safety Board of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism said of the incident at Chubu Centrair International Airport in Aichi Prefecture that the pilot and the copilot had either misunderstood or failed to catch the instructions.
However, China Southern officials rejected the assertion, according to the report.
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It’s hardly unusual for misunderstandings to occur due to language. It is just that typically the pilots and tower work it out before any “incident” occurs.
The real problem here seems to be that the pilots pretended to understand instead of admitting their confusion.
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There should NEVER be ANY misunderstanding between pilots and ground staff due to language.
Thats the whole reason English has been decided on as the universal language used in aviation.
I used to teach Angolan pilots aviation English in the UK and if they didnt get to the required level, they lost their job.
airports need to restrict any airline that can not provide pilots that can speak English
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Exactly. I am reminded of the (probably apocryphal) story of the Lufthansa pilot who while waiting for clearance to taxi out at Frankfurt asked in German for a time check. The tower promptly told him, in English, that all transmissions had to be in English. He replied in English “I am a German, flying for the German national airline, in Germany. Why do I have to speak in English?”
To which a third voice speaking in RP chimed in “Because you lost the bloody war, now didn’t you?”
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Was that actually true or just a joke?
Honestly, the pilot had a point, but still, there should be some discipline on the radio. Coordinating aircrafts is a serious and stressful matter, also the pilot was trained.
I didn’t fly Lufthansa that often in the past, as they are quite expensive, but when I did, the english announcements of the pilot were ok – at least for German ears. ^^
Commenting the video, that’s quite disturbing, how they didn’t understand simple questions.
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You just know that China is going to F*ck over the world with their arrogance, ignorance, and unwillingness to work with the rest of the world.
Just because they can afford to buy the big boy toys doesn’t mean they understand how to use them. At least Russia actually understands the technology they steal.
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Which one are you, Joe or Chris?
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I understand that there’s a negative outlook on “Everyone should speak English” statements, but this is a pretty important one. The world agreed on English as a standard for Air-Traffic Communication and if you can’t intelligibly speak it, you shouldn’t enter a cockpit and head for controlled airspace. China seems to need to learn that they can’t just half-ass air travel like they do industry, outsourcing to the cheapest bidder and having a completely laissez-faire attitude about standards and quality.
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“An air safety board Friday questioned the English ability of a China Southern Airlines pilot and a copilot whose jet entered a runway despite instructions from an air traffic controller not to do so in November 2007.
… However, China Southern officials rejected the assertion, according to the report.(IHT/Asahi: March 28,2009) ”
It’s pretty clear to me as a native English speaker that the pilots in the video coming in to JFK didn’t understand the instructions given to them, and assuming that the incident in Japan was similar, I think that the Japan MLIT safety board will agree.
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Waiting for their excess as to what happened when ANA did the same thisng last week…
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20090321p2a00m0na005000c.html
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