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Global Language Of Pilots
'Tree-niner-fife': The
Global Language of Pilots
BY PATRICK J. KIGER
You
might be surprised to learn that if you're taking an airline flight from a U.S.
airport to some international destination, regardless of whether it's Paris,
Bogota or Beijing, your pilot will be talking to air traffic controllers on the
ground in those countries in the same language, English.
But
it's not a version of English that would make much sense to you, the passenger,
since it's laden with numbers, acronyms and arcane terminology, such as
"Center Control, Papa November tree-niner-fife at tree-tree-zero."
(That
example, taken from Oklahoma State University aviation training materials,
appears in "The Handbook of English for Specific
Purposes.")
The
reason is that according to a set of standards and recommended practices adopted
in 2003 by the International Civil Aviation Organization, pilots on
international flights and air traffic controllers on their routes are required
to speak a specialized version of the language known as Aviation English when
they communicate over the radio.
Elizabeth
Mathews, a linguist and assistant professor in the Department of Applied
Aviation Science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, explained in a phone
interview that Aviation English is required throughout the world, because it
wouldn't be practical for a pilot to have to know all the different languages
spoken in countries where he or she has to fly.
The Evolution of a Common Language
How pilots communicate has evolved since they
first began using radios in the early 1900s, according to Dominique Estival, a
Western Sydney University linguist and co-author of the book "Aviation English: A lingua franca for pilots and
air traffic controllers."
Initially,
they used the Q Code, a sort of simplified version of Morse code, and
eventually, took to speaking the letters rather than tapping them out.
Between
the World Wars, pilots began using the International Telecommunications Union's
phonetic alphabet, in which a code word was assigned to each letter — such as
"alpha" for A, and "bravo" for B — to avoid having someone
mishear a letter.
English
has been the dominant language in aviation since the end of World War II, in
part because the victorious United States became a power in both the airline
industry and aircraft manufacturing.
But
ICAO, an agency with 188 member countries, didn't initially require the use of
English by pilots and controllers.
Instead,
for decades, it took the position that pending the development and adoption of
a more suitable form of speech, English was the recommended — but not mandated
— language to use.
But
there wasn't any requirement for aviation personnel to develop proficiency in
English.
In
1996, airliners from Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan collided in midair near New
Delhi, India, and killed 351 people.
According
to this report on the crash, tapes of radio communications showed that the
Kazakh flight crew had difficulty understanding air traffic control's
instructions, which may have been a factor in the disaster.
That
led India to approach the ICAO and propose that the language rules be
tightened, Mathews said.
ICAO
eventually enacted new rules requiring the use of Aviation English and
mandating that pilots and air traffic controllers on international routes pass
tests to demonstrate proficiency.
Standard Phraseology
Aviation English doesn't have anywhere near as many
words and phrases as the version of the language that most of us speak, but in
some ways it's much more complex and nuanced.
Because a misunderstanding between a pilot and a
controller can lead to catastrophe, Aviation English relies upon a standard
phraseology, which Estival defines in an email as "a prescribed, highly constrained set of phrases to be used
insofar as possible."
As
this 2014 Aerosavvy.com article explains, even the pronunciation of
numbers should follow precise standards for optimum clarity, so that 4, for
example, is spoken as "FOW-er," while 3 becomes "tree"
without the 'h' sound.
But
that vocabulary doesn't necessarily cover every situation that can occur in
aviation. In those instances, pilots and controllers can use "plain"
language, Mathews explained.
After a US Airways airliner that had taken off from
New York's LaGuardia Airport collided with a flock of birds in January 2009 and
suffered engine failure, for example, pilot Chesley "Sully"
Sullenberger diverged from the standard ICAO glossary, and simply told the
controller, "We're going to be in the Hudson," as this National
Public Radio story details.
There
are a lot of different training programs around the world for learning Aviation
English, according to Jennifer Roberts, an Aviation English Specialist in the
College of Aeronautics at Embry-Riddle. But finding a good course isn't necessarily
easy.
"The
most important consideration in training is the particular teaching approach
utilized," Roberts explains in an email.
"
Many
programs are available in the world, but few adhere to best practices as
outlined by ICAO.
Notably,
content-based language instruction is the recommended method, meaning that
students will learn English with content which is relevant, interesting, and
applicable to the domain in which they will use the language.
To
illustrate, think of the reaction you would have if you utilized content about,
for example, art history, in a room full of commercial airline pilots needing
to improve their radiotelephony skills.
In
addition, ICAO recommends that the training is conducted by someone with a
post-graduate degree in Applied Linguistics or TESOL (teaching English to
speakers of other languages), and with aviation familiarity.
There
aren't many English teachers flying aircraft out there in the world, so finding
quality instructors is definitely a challenge.
Aviation English has made flying a lot safer,
according to Estival. "It's been
very successful in reducing misunderstandings and miscommunications," she
explains."
It
would be hard to quantify the number of accidents/incidents that have been
avoided, as all accidents always have a combination of causal factors.
Patrick Kiger
Patrick J. Kiger has written for HowStuffWorks since 2008
covering a wide array of topics, from history and politics to pop culture and
technology. He worked as a newspaper reporter for the Pittsburgh Press, and the
Orange County Register in California, where he covered one of the biggest
serial murder cases in U.S. history, and also as a staff writer at Baltimore
Magazine. As a freelancer, Patrick has written for print publications such as
GQ, Mother Jones and the Los Angeles Times, and on the web for National
Geographic Channel, Discovery News, Science Channel and Fast Company, among
others. In recent years, he's become increasingly interested in how
technological advances are altering urban life and the design of cities, and
has written extensively on that subject for Urban Land magazine. In his spare
time, Patrick is a longtime martial arts student and a fan of crime fiction,
punk rock and classic Hollywood films.
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