Aviation English

A lingua franca for pilots and air traffic controllers

Dominique Estival, Candace Farris, Brett Molesworth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138022386
• eBook ISBN: 9781317339311
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Arts & Humanities

Aviation English investigates the key issues related to the use of English for the purpose of communication in aviation and analyses the current research on language training, testing and assessment in the area of Aviation English. Based on a series of recent empirical studies in aviation communication and taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book:

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• provides a description of Aviation English from a linguistic perspective

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• lays the foundation for increased focus in the area of Aviation English and its assessment in the form of English Language Proficiency (ELP) tests

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• critically assesses recent empirical research in the domain.

This book makes an important contribution to the development of the field of Aviation English and will be of interest to researchers in the areas of applied linguistics, TESOL and English for Specific Purposes.

Chapter 1
Aviation English as a lingua franca

Dominique Estival and Candace Farris

As the title of this book is Aviation English: A lingua franca for pilots and air traffic controllers, we will begin by explaining what we mean by ‘Aviation English’ and by ‘lingua franca’ in the aviation context. The focus of our discussions throughout this book is on communications that take place between air traffic controllers and pilots. Such communications are conducted primarily in a very restricted variety of English, namely Aviation English (AE) which has been designed for this specific purpose. We need to emphasize, however, that English is not the only language of communication between air traffic controllers and pilots, and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) policy regarding languages to be used in aviation radiotelephony is discussed at length in Chapter 3. Although our primary focus here is on Aviation English as the lingua franca (a working language) in communications between air traffic controllers and pilots, this is not the only communication loop in the aviation context: important communications also take place between and among crew members in and beyond the cockpit: at air traffic control centres, controllers are often required to communicate with one another and with controllers at other centres; on the ground, aircraft maintenance staff must communicate among themselves and sometimes with the flight crew in the cockpit. A number of regulations and policies, either mandated (via the national Aeronautical Information Publications, or AIP) or internal to the various organisations (such as airlines, flight training schools or maintenance companies) define and constrain the language all these aviation personnel must use and how they must communicate. This makes Aviation English different from other varieties of English for specific purposes, in that it is mandated by law and heavily regulated.

We make a distinction here between English as a lingua franca (ELF) and Aviation English, which is a lingua franca and a variety of English, but is not ELF. ELF is a much broader construct, which covers many more contexts, situations and speakers than Aviation English, and is not a stable variety (see Canagarajah, 2013, for a recent discussion of the history of the concept of ELF). Aviation English is a lingua franca, i.e. a working language, but a relatively stable variety. As pointed out by Barbara Seidlhofer at the annual conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics in 2012, it could be argued that Aviation English has no native speakers, in that it is a speech variety that must be learned even by native speakers of English. In that respect, it would fit the original meaning of ‘lingua franca’, a language used by speakers who have no common language (see Pennycook, 2012, for discussion of the meaning of the term). Furthermore, like other languages for specific purposes, it has a restricted domain, and is only used for the specific purpose of communication in the aviation environment.¹

ELF often refers to the use of English as a common language between non-native speakers of English, and this is of course an important use of English as a lingua franca (see e.g. Seidlhofer, 2009). An expanded view of English as a lingua franca, however, also includes all combinations of native English speakers (NES) and non-native speakers of English (EL2), i.e. EL2-EL2, NES-NES and EL2-NES. This is certainly also the case for Aviation English. This expanded view of lingua franca that includes native speakers is not a new concept in applied linguistics. For example, as early as in the second edition of the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (Richards et al., 1992), the definition of the term states that a lingua franca may have native speakers.² We conceptualize Aviation English as being a language for a specific purpose, used by both native and non-native speakers of English who communicate with each other in a context where English is the working language, although a second language for many. We discuss the role of NES in aviation communication from the point of view of the requirement that they, as well as EL2, must cooperate to ensure mutual intelligibility. In other words, being a native speaker of English does not guarantee proficiency in Aviation English.

Regarding our use of the term ‘Aviation English’, we take it as covering not only communications which involve ‘standard phraseology’ – a prescribed, highly constrained set of phrases to be used insofar as possible in all radiotelephonic communications between controllers and pilots – but also communications which involve the use of natural English or ‘plain language’ – to be used in aviation situations where the standard phraseology is either non-existent or insufficient. In Aviation English, mutual understanding between pilots and air traffic controllers is of paramount importance for air safety, and all interlocutors, regardless of their native language, have a responsibility in achieving that goal. The standardization of plain language in the global aviation context is as challenging as the standardization of a lingua franca in any global context and, given the high-stakes nature of controller–pilot communications and the diverse contexts in which these communications occur, this tension between variation and standardization is particularly strong. The role of ‘plain English’ is further discussed in the context of the linguistic description of Aviation English in Chapter 2.

High profile accidents were instrumental in raising awareness to the importance of effective air traffic controller–pilot communications and were fundamental in the development of a standard phraseology for air traffic controller–pilot communications. As a result, the ICAO language proficiency requirements which were introduced in 2003 and came into effect in March 2011 (ICAO 2004, 2010) solidified the role of Aviation English as the lingua franca of aviation, elevating proficiency in the English-based language of radiotelephonic communications from a recommended to a required status. We discuss some of the benefits and challenges associated with this policy in later chapters. In this chapter, we provide a brief history of how Aviation English came to be the working language of aviation, answering the questions of when and why English became the basis for the lingua franca in aviation.

History of English as the language of communication in aviation

At the beginning of aviation, there was no air traffic control and no radio communication. Pilots were unable to communicate verbally with the ground or with each other. When radios became more portable and could be taken on board aircraft, the system of communication was based on the Morse code (with combinations of dots and dashes representing letters and numbers) already in use by ships, and the structure of messages followed maritime conventions adapted as necessary. The radio medium imposes constraints of brevity and, because it is a one-way mode of communication, requires messages to be as unambiguous as possible to avoid repetitions and requests for clarification. This is especially the case when each message has to be spelled out letter by letter as with Morse code.

The ‘Q Code’ was created by the British Government in 1909 to codify radio communication and make it more succinct and unambiguous. One advantage is that it is independent of the language of either the sender or the receiver, and it was adopted internationally in 1912. In the ‘Q Code’ system, every communication starts with a three-letter group always beginning with ‘Q’ (for ‘query’). The three-letter code is used both as question and response, followed by information as needed. For instance, the code ‘QRL’ corresponds to the question ‘Are you busy?’ and can be answered with ‘QRL’, meaning ‘I am busy’. The code ‘QRB’ corresponds to the question ‘What is your distance’, with the answer ‘QRB’ followed by a number meaning ‘My distance is xxx’. The Q code is still used by amateur radio operators and some remnants can be found in the aviation domain. For instance ‘QNH’ (which can be interpreted as ‘Query No Height’), now indicates the barometric pressure at sea level (e.g. ‘QNH 1015’).

The Q Code was very successful in making communications clear, succinct and unambiguous. It was first tied to Morse but transferred easily to spoken radio communication, with letters being pronounced instead of being tapped. However, it is not flexible and does not allow for the creativity of natural language. A problem that became apparent when operators moved to spoken radio communication was that individual letters and numbers can be very difficult to distinguish from each other and that individual variations in pronunciation often render messages ambiguous or intelligible (‘Was this a P or a T?’).

Between the two World Wars, most commercial pilots were ex-military personnel who had taken part in building the air forces of their countries and who went on to develop commercial civil aviation. Thus, until World War II, aeronautical communication was a natural extension of military and maritime conventions in use in each region. The first international phonetic alphabet, assigning a code word to each letter of the alphabet (e.g. Alfa for A, Bravo for B, etc.), so that critical combinations can be pronounced unambiguously and understood regardless of the transmitter or receiver’s native language, was created for maritime use and adopted by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Radio Conference in 1927. With some modifications, it was then adopted by the International Commission for Air Navigation (ICAN) and used in civil aviation until World War II. The phonetic alphabet code underwent several modifications until the final version was implemented in 1956, taking into account the development of alternative alphabets for military joint operations during the war as well as feedback from pilots and air traffic controllers from 31 countries after the war. As the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, or NATO Phonetic Alphabet, it remains in use by the military and by civilians in both maritime and aeronautical communication. The main issue, as with all radio communication, was to ensure brevity and clarity, avoiding any possible ambiguity or confusion.

After World War II, commercial aviation developed very rapidly around the globe and many new air routes were opened. The victory of the Allied forces and the supremacy of the USA in aeronautical engineering, due in part to the wide destruction of industrial infrastructure in Europe and in Japan, meant that a large proportion of aircraft were designed and built in the USA. Even before the end of the war, the USA had initiated a number of studies and consultations to ‘secure international co-operation and the highest possible degree of uniformity in regulations and standards, procedures and organisation regarding civil aviation matters’ (ICAO, 2001). The 1944 International Civil Aviation Conference in Chicago resulted in the establishment of ICAO as a permanent international body and laid the foundation for rules and regulations bringing safety to air navigation throughout the world.

Most of the regulations concerned the technologies and procedures to follow during navigation, especially given the rapid development of new technologies at the time,³ but Annex 10 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation deals with ‘Aeronautical Telecommunications’ and is the document which specifies language requirements for Civil Aviation. One of the earlier recommendations, in 1960, regarding language was that Radiotelephony (RT) Speech be recognized as the International Language for Aviation, instead of the previous Q Code. The main advantage of a natural language instead of a code is the possibility of creating new messages in new situations and of allowing some flexibility when required. A natural language is also more intuitive and may be easier to remember; however, as we shall see, its very flexibility may cause ambiguity and confusion, so it has to be codified to a certain extent. In 1987, Annex 10 was reorganised to present ‘English language radiotelephony phraseology in all language versions of the regulations’, which at the time were English, French, Russian and Spanish.

In the same year, in the foreword to Robertson’s manual Airspeak, Johnson characterized what we now call ‘Aviation English’ as ‘what is probably the world’s most successful semi-artificial international language: English-based RT phraseology and procedures’ and stated that ‘to all intents and purposes English-based RT is the international “lingua Franca” of air traffic control’. (Robertson, 1987: viii). The distinction between ‘international’ and ‘universal’ is not always understood;⁴ the idea that ‘English is the universal language of communication used in civil aviation’ (preface to the Collins Dictionary of Aeronautical English, 1999) is common among English-speaking pilots and, as we shall see in Chapter 2, contributes to the difficulties experienced by non-native speakers, because native speakers are not always trained, or sometimes do not perceive the need, to adjust their speech when communicating with non-native speakers of English – a concept that will be discussed more fully in Chapter 3. Given the widely held belief in the English-speaking world that all aeronautical communications are required to be held in English, it is worth giving in full the text of the regulations (ICAO, 2001: 5.3):

5.2.1.2 Language to be used

5.2.1.2.1 The air–ground radiotelephony communications shall be conducted in the language normally used by the station on the ground or in the English language.

Note 1. – The language normally used by the station on the ground may not necessarily be the language of the State in which it is located. A common language may be agreed upon regionally as a requirement for stations on the ground in that region.

Note 2. – The level of language proficiency required for aeronautical radiotelephony communications is specified in the Appendix to Annex 1.

5.2.1.2.2 The English language shall be available, on request from any aircraft station, at all stations on the ground serving designated airports and routes used by international air services.

5.2.1.2.3 The languages available at a given station on the ground shall form part of the Aeronautical Information Publications and other published aeronautical information concerning such facilities.

Moreover, the ICAO Manual for the Implementation of Language Proficiency Requirements (ICAO, 2010) clearly specifies not only that non-native speakers are not expected to attain the same English proficiency as native speakers, but that native speakers must share the burden of making all communications intelligible to the international aeronautical community. More specifically, the ICAO Manual states that ICAO took ‘a principled decision that native speech should not be privileged in a global context’ (ICAO 2010: 4.8) and that ‘native speakers of English, in particular, have an ethical obligation to increase their linguistic awareness and to take special care in the delivery of messages.’ Indeed, ‘native speakers are under the same obligation as non-native speakers to ensure that their variety of English is comprehensible to the international aviation community’ (ICAO, 2010: 5.4).

Nevertheless, proficiency with the English language has been identified as an integral part of international aviation safety (MacBurnie, 2004) and, as we shall see in the next section, effective communication using Aviation English is now considered crucial.

Communicating ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Aviation English as a lingua franca
• 2 Aviation English: A linguistic description
• 3 ICAO language proficiency requirements
• 4 Aviation language testing
• 5 Communications between air traffic control and pilots
• 6 Contextual factors impacting on aviation communication
• 7 Native English speakers and EL2 pilots: An experimental study
• 8 Conclusions and future research
• Index