English in Global Aviation

Context, Research, and Pedagogy

Eric Friginal, Elizabeth Mathews, Jennifer Roberts

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781350059320
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Taking readers step-by-step through the major issues surrounding the use of English in the global aviation industry, this book provides a clear introduction to turning research into practice in the field of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), specifically Aviation English, and a valuable case study of applied linguistics in action. With both cutting-edge research and evidence-based practice, the critical role of English in aviation is explored across a variety of contexts, including the national and global policies impacting training and language assessment for pilots, air-traffic controllers, ground staff, and students. English in Global Aviation teaches readers how to apply linguistic research to real world, practical settings. The book uses a range of corpus-based findings and related research to provide an effective analysis of the language needs of the aviation industry and an extended look at linguistic principles in action. Readers are presented with case studies, transcriptions, radiotelephony, and a clear breakdown of the common vocabulary and phrasal patterns of aviation discourse. Students and teachers of both linguistics and aviation will discover the requirements and challenges of successful intercultural communication in this industry, as well as insights into how to teach, develop, and assess aviation English language courses.

PART ONE

Context

1

English in Global Aviation: Historical Perspectives

1.1. Introduction: Missed opportunities

“Pull up, Baby.” These are some of the final words recorded on the cockpit voice recorder on an American Airlines (AA) Boeing 757 just before it slammed into the tree line at the summit of El Deluvio Mountain near Cali, Colombia (Cockpit Voice Recorder Transcript, American Airlines Flight 965, Dec. 20, 1995) (Simmon, 1998).

On December 19, 1995, the day before his plane crashed on El Deluvio, the American pilot who, with this desperate plea, urged his jet to gain the few meters needed to clear the summit had played a game of tennis with his wife. She was a flight attendant with American Airlines. He was a captain, fifty-seven years old, and in good health. Earlier that week, they had celebrated Christmas with family in New Jersey. The official accident investigation also reported that he didn’t smoke and was respected by his colleagues for his good communication skills. He had flown 13,000 hours with no accidents or incidents and had made thirteen previous trips to Cali for American Airlines.

His First Officer copilot was younger and had accumulated 5,800 flying hours. He lived in Orlando, Florida, where he and his wife home-schooled their children. The afternoon before the accident, he had played basketball with his children, and that evening, the family went to a basketball game to watch their son play. He went to bed about 11:30 p.m.

Both men commuted to Miami on December 20 for the start of the trip, arriving at the airport early for dispatch planning and pre-flight briefing. Despite their good planning, their departure to Cali was delayed for more than two hours due to late-arriving baggage and passengers from a connecting flight and an air traffic control hold because of congested airport ground traffic. The flight to Cali was three hours and twelve minutes. However, the aircraft did not arrive in Cali and neither man went home to his family. They and all but 4 of the 161 passengers and crew on AA Flight 965 lost their lives in the crash on El Deluvio.

There is almost never a single cause to an aircraft accident, and AA 965’s crash in Colombia is no exception. None of the details above are incidental or irrelevant to the accident investigation; even quite personal details about the pilots’ families and activities in the days and hours before the accident are important to investigators as they piece together possible latent and contributory factors that may have led to the accident. In addition to flight and flight training records, accident investigators consider what personal stress a pilot may be experiencing; whether or not he or she was encountering relationship or financial problems. What kind of temperament did the pilot have? Could pilot fatigue have been a factor? How much sleep and rest did the pilot have in the two or three days prior to the accident? What is not presented in the Accident Investigation Report in any systematic manner is information confirming the first language of the pilots or air traffic controllers (ATCs), or their degree of language proficiency in the languages used for radiotelephony communications.

According to findings in the official report of the Colombia Accident Investigation Bureau, a host of complex factors contributed to this accident. Within the set of technical, operational, and organizational factors identified, the accident investigators uncovered evidence of possible language problems in the communications between the pilots and the Cali airport ATC who was the last person in communication with the American pilots.

The December 20, 1995, accident was one of several high-profile accidents in which inadequate English language proficiency or potentially misleading English phraseology has been implicated as a possible contributory factor in the chain of events leading to the accident or incident. A close review of the circumstances of the Cali crash—the findings of the accident investigators and the causal, contributory, and latent factors they uncovered—included a particular focus on the role of language. An analysis of this particular tragedy vis-à-vis airline industry language proficiency requirements, including those enforced at the time of the accident as well as subsequent amendments, discloses the historical role that English-based communication and the English language in general have played within the aviation industry.

1.2. The case of American Airlines 965

Redundancy and discipline are intentional features of aviation safety. Engineers, mechanics, pilots, and safety experts build redundancy into the aviation system so that a failure in one part of the system is compensated for by another part of the system. Pilot training is intense, focused, and frequent. Various checklists ensure that correct procedures are followed and documented. One pilot flies the aircraft (the “pilot flying”) and the other monitors the flight and manages air traffic control communications (the “pilot monitoring”). When the pilot monitoring the flight takes an action on the flight deck, he or she “calls it out” to the pilot flying, who is required to verbally acknowledge and affirm the action, so that both pilots maintain high situational awareness about the status of the aircraft at all times. Below 10,000 feet, pilots are required to maintain a “sterile cockpit”; that is, no conversation is permitted other than that directly related to the operation of the aircraft.

AA 965 departed late from Miami, and the pilots expressed some concern during the flight about possible delays. A late arrival to Cali can interfere with passengers’ connecting flights. The Aeronautica Civil Report included the “flight crew’s ongoing efforts to expedite their approach and landing in order to avoid potential delays” as a contributing factor to the accident. At 2136:30, the approach controller offered the pilots an opportunity to shorten their approach to Cali by flying a more direct approach to the airport, to land on runway 19 rather than runway 01 as planned in their original flight plan:

“Sir the wind is calm. are you able to [execute the] approach [to] runway one niner?” … The captain responded, “uh yes sir, we’ll need a lower altitude right away though.” The approach controller then stated, “Roger. American nine six five is cleared to VOR DME approach runway one niner. Rozo number one, arrival. Report Tulua VOR”’ (AA 1965 Report, 995, p. 3).

Accepting the offer required that the pilots reconfigure the aircraft for a new flight path into the Cali airport, including accomplishing the following steps and procedures (also from the same report, p. 30):

• Locate, remove from its binder, and prominently position the chart for the approach to runway.

• Review the approach chart for relevant information such as radio frequencies, headings, altitudes, distances, and missed approach procedures.

• Select and enter data from the airplane’s flight management system (FMS) computers related to the new approach.

• Compare information on the VOR DME Runway 19 approach chart with approach information displayed from FMS data.

• Verify that selected radio frequencies, airplane headings, and FMS-entered data were correct.

• Recalculate airspeeds, altitudes, configurations, and other airplane control factors for selected points on the approach.

• Hasten the descent of the airplane because of the shorter distance available to the end of new runway.

• Monitor the course and descent of the airplane, while maintaining communications with air traffic control.

The accident investigators determined that the pilots did not have adequate time to complete these tasks in order to properly and safely prepare a new approach to the airport and should have discontinued the new approach. Pilots are always “in command” of the aircraft, responsible for the safety of the flight, and have the prerogative to refuse an ATC’s instruction.

The next critical error occurred when the pilots entered “R” into the flight management system (FMS), to reconfigure the flight path to Rozo Non-directional Beacon (NDB). An NDB is an electronic beacon on the ground that interacts with systems on board an aircraft to guide the aircraft along a selected flight path. However, the pilots incorrectly selected “R” identifier in the FMS, and in this case, “R” represented “Romeo” NDB. The correct FMS identifier for Rozo was “RZ”; however, “R” appeared first, and the pilot entered “R.” The selection of “R” directed the aircraft to “Romeo” NDB, which was in a different direction away from the intended flight path, and the aircraft began a turn away from Cali toward the Romeo NDB location, near Bogota. It is noteworthy that Romeo was incorrectly entered without the required call-out and confirming response between the two pilots:

One of the AA 965 pilots selected a direct course to the Romeo NDB believing that it was the Rozo NDB, and upon executing the selection in the FMS permitted a turn of the airplane towards Romeo, without having verified that it was the correct selection and without having first obtained approval of the other pilot, contrary to AA’s procedures. (AA 965 Report, 1995, p. 55)

The left-hand turn off the Cali track headed the plane toward higher terrain while, at the same time, the plane was in a descent mode, and because the pilots wrongly assumed they were still on track for Cali, they continued their descent. They did not initially recognize that they had entered a wrong waypoint into their FMS, but as the aircraft began a turn to the left, the pilots began to realize that they were headed off course.

Previously, in order to expedite their descent to the Cali airport, the pilots had employed the speed brakes of the aircraft to reduce their air speed. Speed brakes are mechanisms on the surface of an aircraft’s wings that can be raised or lowered to increase the drag across the wing surface and slow the plane. Moments later, when the Ground Proximity Warning System sounded, alerting the pilots to the imminent collision with terrain (“Whoop whoop. Pull up! Pull up!”), the pilots did not appear to recall that their speed brakes were still deployed, inhibiting the climb of the aircraft when the pilots increased power to the engines to try to lift the plane over the top of the mountain. “Pull up Baby!” They nearly made it. The aircraft slammed into the tree tops at an altitude of 8,900 feet on the east side of the mountain and crashed just below the summit on the West side.

1.2.1. Language as a possible contributing factor

The Accident Investigation Report of the Aeronautica Civil of the Republic of Colombia lists eighteen official “findings” of the accident investigation team. None mention language use or language proficiency. The accident investigators identified four probable causes of the accident. Again, none refer to language use or language proficiency. Four contributing factors are identified; there is no reference to anything related to language use or language proficiency of interactants. One of the twenty recommendations made by the accident investigation team does, however, urge ICAO, a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN), to take measures to ensure that pilots and ATCs strictly adhere to ICAO standards of phraseology and terminology in all radio telecommunications between pilots and controllers. (Chapter 2 explores more closely ICAO and its role in setting and promoting standards for aviation safety.)

Although not at the level of an official finding or recommendation, the AA 965 Report (1995) also notes that the Cali airspace was not provided with:

• radar coverage,

• computer software to alert aircraft deviation from a safe altitude,

• computer software to enhance the radar image of a particular flight,

• “a controller who shared a native language and culture with the flight crew.” (p. 49)

Accident reports typically do not mention factors that are not relevant or potentially contributory to the accident, so it is significant that the accident investigators noted a lack of a “shared native language and culture.” In order to understand how this limitation might have been a factor in the AA 965 accident, three critical linguistic contexts must be considered: (1) the nature of aeronautical radiotelephony communications, that is, the voice communications between pilots and controllers, (2) the use of phraseology and plain operational English in the unfolding pilot and controller dialogue in the moments before the accident, and (3) the language policies in place for aviation communications in the decades leading up to the AA 965 accident.

1.2.2. The nature of aeronautical radiotelephony communications

Aeronautical radiotelephony communications is an overarching term that refers to the communications between pilots and ATCs or between pilots communicating with pilots in other aircraft via the radiotelephone. Phraseology and plain operational language represent distinct but overlapping and related uses of English within radiotelephony communications and are equally key to maintaining a safe degree of separation between aircraft. For many decades, as phraseology was developed in use, ICAO has published standard phraseology for civil aviation authorities to adopt into their national regulations.

ICAO Document 9835 (2010) characterizes radiotelephony communications as “highly context-dependent,” requiring a professional understanding of aviation operations, procedures, and technical themes and topics. Many of the pilot and ATC communication sequences involve routine procedures, and ATCs in particular are trained to adhere closely to standard published phraseology. Depending on the local or national regulations, in some cases, pilots receive explicit phraseology training; in many cases, pilots learn how to communicate on the radio “on the job.” Radiotelephony communications require knowledge of the highly restricted sub-language that is ICAO standard phraseology as well as plain, operationally related, language proficiency.

Phraseology is simply the words and phrases codified in ICAO documents that are linked to a specific phase of flight and a particular procedure. The use of specific words and phrases for particular and mostly routine situations is prescribed in several ICAO documents: Annex 10, Volume II (Aeronautical Telecommunications); Document 4444 (Air Traffic Management), and Document 9432 (Manual of Radiotelephony).

Phraseology forms the basis of a very restricted and specialized sub-language that is described by Philips (1991) as composed of a reduced vocabulary of approximately 400 words and phrases. Utterances are brief, concise, and function words (such as articles, conjunctions, and pronouns) are deleted. Syntax is reduced and vocabulary is prescribed. Phraseology depends upon prior knowledge and shared information about the airspace and routine, expected procedures (Moder & Halleck, 2009). An example of standard phraseology in the communications near Cali is this aircraft controller instruction to AA 965:

Roger, is cleared to Cali VOR, uh, descend and maintain one, five thousand feet. Altimeter three zero zero two. (Simmon, 1998, p. 22)

In conversational English this message would be something like the one below:

I have received and understood your message. You are cleared to fly to the Cali VOR. You are cleared to descend your aircraft to an altitude of fifteen thousand feet. Upon reaching an altitude of fifteen thousand feet, maintain that altitude until you receive further instructions. Set your altimeters to 3002 inches of pressure.

Standard phraseology not only saves time but it also reduces the greater chance for misunderstandings resulting from variabili...