I don't think it's only Boeing airplanes where the autopilot will resist your attempts to override it with manual control inputs. If anything, I kinda expect that Airbus planes are even more opinionated about that type of behavior.
Damn, the guy doesn't say the plane doesn't respond to commands but "l'avion fait n'importe quoi" which implies more like the responses to commands are not the one expected.
The pilot said "[...] un problème de commandes de vol, l'avion a fait à peu près n'importe quoi [...]" and it translates as "[...] flight controls issue, the plane did just about whatever [...]".
To add a bit more, it's interesting to note that at several points in the recording the pilots can be heard fighting the controls and apparently requiring force for that (https://youtu.be/VzCNKhFOPqU?t=25 for example). I know the two ariplanes are unrelated but this was also the case for 737 Max IIRC.
It disengages when you fight it. With the associated and very recognizable autopilot disengage sound. I'm sure there is more to this story than "crew mistake" as some seem to imply here.
To be fair, the "some seem to imply" is directly sourced from the analysis of a 777 pilot. Do you have a source for the "it disengages when you fight it" assertion? You're kinda calling the 777 pilot a liar ;-)
I'm absolutely not knowledgeable on this topic so double check everything I say.
I think the issue on the 737 Max was that there's been a known and studied system (called the MCAS IIRC) on Boeing planes that overrides pilot controls under some specific pre-determined circumstances and that system had been buffed to compensate for design flaws that were discovered too late to be corrected. On top of being faulty, that buffed system was also way outside of its initial intent and purpose (or rather the parameters guiding its operation were changed so much that it should have been addressed as a separate system and mandated specific training while they were trying to portray the plane as a simple evolution requiring no pilot re-training from earlier versions of the 737).
So, to me, it looks like yet another issue with a system overriding pilot controls for whatever reason.
More generally, this falls into that weird pattern of relying on external sensors which starts a chain of bad decisions leading to accidents (this was also a sensor issue with the Air France 447, although the chain was largely human this time, the pilots realizing way too late their repeated mistake).
This is a B777-300, which does not have MCAS. The 737-Max had MCAS added because of the larger engines on that model than prior 737s. This is not an issue "on [all] Boeing planes" (which, to be fair you didn't directly say, but what you did say was pretty ambiguous and could easily [perhaps even most naturally] be read to have meant that).
Sorry, this happens a lot to me. For the record I'm not trying to discredit Boeing. I do have issues organizing and expressing my thoughts which results in less than ideal communication.
> The language used by Air Traffic Control is quite simple: whichever the pilot chooses to use. Normally this is between English and whatever the language is of the place that they are flying to/from. Although English is the only official language.
Interesting. I listen to lots of ATC, and I'm fluent in French. It was really noticable how much less legible French is on the radio, stuff like AF zero un and AF zero onze differ by so little you cannot distinguish them.
Radio English has specific alternative prononciations, which help avoid this, like "fife" and "niner".
French military radio procedures also have specific pronunciations to disambiguate words. The fact that it is not used (assuming it is not) in ATC radio is not a feature of the French language.
Are you a native french speaker? I'm fluent in a couple languages and all but my native one are insanely hard to understand over radio. Even with the special pronunciations there are a lot of nearly indistinguishable sounds in english, and I'm not sure those sounds are even apparent to a non-native speaker who isn't specifically trained in them. It's very possible they are using an equivalent but we can't hear it without some practice.
It comes with practice and ATC recordings sound way worse than how it sounds in the aircraft. Because it's recorded with a basic radio on the ground (causing much more interference) instead of a much better one that's up in the air with great reception.
This is very true. I'm a native English speaker and ~1200 hour pilot. I have no trouble with the radio in the airplane, but many of the VAS Aviation and other recreations that do not come from released ATC tapes are quite hard to understand.
There's also a defined cadence and order for many transmissions. If you read off the automated weather or a clearance in the usual order, it's easy to transcribe it. If you read it off out of order, it would sound the same [and just as difficult] to a non-pilot, but would be much more difficult for a pilot to write down.
The official way of saying numbers in French is to spell each digit separately and 1 is "unité". So 011 is zéro, unité, unité.
However if it is clear enough and there is no ambiguity, the common way of saying numbers can be used, so zéro onze is acceptable. In normal conditions, no french speaker will mistake "onze" for "un", the latter should be "unité" anyways.
The main problem with "un" is that it sounds like "hein?", which means something like "huh?", the kind of meaningless words that punctuate conversations without even noticing.
The other day I asked for direction at a front desk and the lady told me to go to the office # "trente quatre vingt", I wasn't sure whether that was "3420" or "3080".
I had a discussion with my (natively French-speaking) in-laws about this some time ago! Essentially, native speakers rely heavily on short pauses in the pronunciation of numbers, causing 3420 to be pronounced "trente quatre vingt", whereas 3080 would be "trente quatrevingt". Relatively hard to pick up on as a foreigner, but second nature to native speakers.
SERA.14015 Language to be used in air-ground communication
Regulation (EU) 2016/1185
(a) The air-ground radiotelephony communications shall be conducted in the English language or in the language normally used by the station on the ground.
Many of the early innovators in aviation were French or in France, and consequently, the French language has a lot of influence in aviation. The terms 'mayday' and 'pan-pan' both originate from French. Flight recorders around the world are labelled in English and French. If English were not the primary language for aviation, it would probably be French instead.
Because shit is hitting the fan as far as the pilots are concerned and they're going to default to their native language. Informing the tower of WTF is going on is secondary.
It was generated using AI as a criticism of a comment that they didn't understand, and suggesting that AI would be more coherent, before giving an example.
But the comment that they were criticizing was perfectly reasonable if the facts it was based on are correct (that the apparent packet loss was periodic, not random). There is another possible explanation (the interference itself was periodic), but their position and explanation is not at all unreasonable, never mind incoherent.
All that said, the more interesting comment is the most recent (at time of writing), from a passenger on another flight landing at the same airport, on the same day, suggesting that their plane suffered from a similar issue.
Your comment, however, is lazy and lacks substance. "I stopped reading because..." is a cancer on discourse. Read, then criticize, or STFU. (I confess I have been guilty of your approach in the past).
I stopped reading after seeing the AI generated comment because the generated text made an equal amount of sense as the other comments. In other words I don’t know enough to verify anything I’m reading.
Lol, no, you specifically called out the response that referenced AI, but now you're saying you didn't understand any of them? Sounds like you need to take a breath, relax, and stop shit-posting. Even your excuses are incoherent.
Yesterday on France info, someone (a military pilot?) said the black boxes were probably already read and he said that it's probably not a generic problem of Boeing 777 ans as the administration in charge would have already told it if it was the case.
Nowadays i very rarely read any actual articles.
I enjoy and really appreciate the speculation, and learn so much from it (not just about this subject).
This is not normal, and they can't keep blaming it on having outsourced software work to low-paid Indian programmers like in the past.
It would be interesting to tally up incidents like these, and see if there is some pattern to what type of plane, manufacturer, geographical location of incident etc.
No compelling difference between Airbus and Boeing here. The 777 and a330 are similar. 737 and a32x are very similar. Really the only outlier is the 737max, which isn’t enough to indicate some deeper problem with Boeing planes.
Expecting a lot of armchair NTSB investigators to rock up here, but honestly not much indication on what happened until the appropriate authorities can pull the data recorders out of the aircraft and see what was going on.
Looking forward to reading what happened but until then…
Interesting observation that the controllers and pilots were speaking French to each other. They’re really not supposed to do that (English is the standard for ATC, in part so other aircraft can maintain situational awareness) but that happens a lot in France.
Korean Air had crash after crash until they forbid crew from speaking in Korean. Turns out cultural norms (highly hierarchical power structure) and honorifics were causing copilots to refrain from pointing out issues or pointing them out in an unclear way.
A Colombian airline crashed in New York after running out of fuel due to similar deference to air traffic control.
The Colombian airline crash: they were speaking English though. NYC ATC is going to be brusque and quick... The new Yorker way. Not many cultures understand that...
ATC needs to be effective for all cultures that fly into that airport. If the new york one so deviates from the norm that it can cause crashes that is a very serious problem that needs to be addressed.
That said I don't have any reason to think it actually does and you didn't supply one either. Are air traffic controllers even normally from the area where they work? Don't they get assigned?
Sadly, there was a compounding issue that the pilots didn’t declare an emergency or divert when they were running out of fuel. They thought asking for “priority” was sufficient, when the word has more urgency in their native language than it does in English. :(
New York controllers were more abrasive than they were used to and they had trouble speaking up. The controllers also didn’t communicate well amongst themselves and the pilots didn’t know their request for a sooner landing to due low fuel was not passed on.
Ultimately, the problem was the pilot’s failure to follow procedures. With the controllers being disorganized either due to lack of procedure or failure to follow it. Either of them could have prevented it.
Note: It is not sufficient to blame the pilots and move on. People make mistakes. Both sides need to be improved, because single points of failure kill people.
There are JFK ATC conversations on youtube. Even I, an native English speaker but not American, have difficulty understanding them sometimes. They also sometimes come across as being dicks, but obviously only the audience-worthy conversations get uploaded
In my experience the NY ATC can be brusque in a way that can border on the unprofessional, and they tend to have an accent that can be hard to understand if you're not from there and you're listening on your crappy AM aviation radio. I assume that would go double for a non-native speaker of English.
In the rest of the country that I've flown in, the controllers seem to be aiming for the voice of bored Apollo mission controllers.
I’m a private pilot that’s flown in NYC Class B repeatedly and trained here. I think the reputations are overblown and based mostly on the novelty of the accents and some amusing audio clips that have circulated for years.
Given the amazing volume they handle I’ve always found them nothing but crisp and professional.
If you’re also basing your opinion on those audio clips rather than actually asking for clearances or navigating the exclusions I think you might also have the wrong impression.
It’s not so much that they deviate from the norm (quite the opposite, there’s a manual that dictates exact phraseology), it’s just that there’s SO MUCH traffic that they don’t have time to hold hands, and they expect you to be competent. In other words, there’s very little time or room for error, and that can come off as rudeness.
It is always the pilot’s prerogative to overrule ATC (if there’s a legitimate reason) and/or declare an emergency. And I assure you NY ATC would take it seriously if you do. They just don’t have time to dance around.
> Are air traffic controllers even normally from the area where they work? Don't they get assigned?
They are highly specialized on local facilities, weather, traffic flows, etc. The New York Metro area is one, if not the, most complicated airspace’s to control in the world. 4 major international airports (and tons of smaller airports/heliports) surrounding dense major cities with complicated weather, noise abatement procedures, and high congestion.
There are dozens of air traffic controllers of all different seats (supervisors, arrivals, ground, towers, helicopters) in the region. It’s a lot of coordinate.
some years back I worked on a project with Korean Air on exactly that topic, cockpit communication and honorifics... A compounding factor was that pilots and crew often came from military backgrounds.
I learned about a number of air disasters and PanAm/KLM crash[1] in Tenerife 1977 really stuck with me. In the transcript a Dutch pilot says something like "We are now at take off" when he was indicating that the plane was in the process of taking off. (an idiomatic way of expression)
There was already much stress on the situation as an incident at another airport caused massive traffic rearrangement across Europe. Under stress we revert to native ways of expression. I tried to keep this incident in the back of my mind throughout the project, and since...
What is really maddening about Korean neo-confucian society is this automatic social hierarchy based on your age, as if to suggest someone who is older than you is automatically infallible and has authority over you. It was exported to Japan (Senpai and kōhai is a direct model of Korean sunbae, hoobae) but it doesn't seem to practice Confucianism this strictly, there really is no other countries that take it this extremely.
It reminds me of the Japanese invasion of Chosun dynasty, how the rigid military/confucian structure made communication impossible and largely allowed unopposed landings by Hideyoshi's army.
It isn't based on individual age. I know Korean cousins with a 20 year age difference where the younger one gets the honorific because his lineage is older and he's an earlier generation. They never speak Korean with each other.
As a low-ranking middle aged average white guy from a small 1st world country: if I go to Korea can I get a status boost?
I have seen low-rank white dudes get status upgrades in other Asian countries for a variety of reasons. One architect told me how he was hanging with high status Indonesians, and how he could name-drop NZ politicians (for example, the minister of finance) because our culture means low-rank citizens can personally know people in high-rank positions. Perhaps I can manipulate the Korean status game in my favour because my background is somewhat unmeasurable.
You'd exist largely outside of the neo confucianist status structure. You'd be a foreigner in a way that is hard to understand if you've spent all your life in the heterogeneous melting pots.
I'm many cases this would apply even if you are Korean but grew up outside the hierarchy (i.e. grew up in the US)
You'd have some status as a us citizen as a white person, but it's complicated and a double edged sword
No, they have a label for someone who tries to do what you described, they are called 루저벡홈 or literally "Losers back home", or typically a white person that uses their racial status exactly in the manner you described.
It might have worked in the 60s or in South East Asia but certainly will not work anymore in East Asia, especially in a hyper connected world. In fact many foreigners who achieved celebrity status by lying were quickly cancelled.
By large, a non-asian person in East Asia is largely limited to an exotic animal at the zoo. Somewhat of a novelty for kids and adults to point and laugh "wow! we have foreigners in our country speaking our language".
You would see the same response towards a monkey suddenly speaking Korean or Japanese.
A better place to get a status upgrade could be the UK. A New Zillund accent doesnt really slot in anywhere in particular in the Brit class system so you are granted a kind of free pass while they work out your abilities. (Experience from last century - may have changed!).
If it's same as senpai/kouhai system I'm familiar with, it only works in an organization, and either you'll carry your batch number/generation ID/year joined in that org, or you're out of the system as an age-free subject matter expert.
It is. you are using a special anecdotal case in a family situation (that same person would use honorifics towards their friends who are much older) to negate the rest of Korean society that uses one's age to decide who is above and below you, and the necessary honorifics. DK effect is quite laughable to see from a non-Korean.
I invite you to address your professor or sunbae or the elderly without honorifics and see their reaction. You wouldn't be able to use your race card very long.
From my vast expertise (sarcasm) from watching Kpop, Korean variety shows, and Korean movies, the whole age thing is pretty rampant and adhered to, at least from those lenses. I mean, they have literal discussions while shooting regarding asking direct ages in order to speak "familiar" or not. It is pretty weird and arbitrary, especially with the way Koreans measure age.
those media you consume are a reflection of society. koreans use honorifics with strangers until they signal they wish to communicate casually and usually its completely subjective. somebody will only differ by mere months and demand you use honorifics (bullying). somebody will differ by few years and do not enforce it. its completely subjective and adds to the stress of interaction between strangers.
> It was exported to Japan (Senpai and kōhai is a direct model of Korean sunbae, hoobae) ...
Hmm I don't exactly know which way the terms were exported, but many people blame modern Korea's ageism on colonial Japan (at least partially), where the Japanese Empire tried to run itself as grandiose military barracks and trained everyone to be subject to the social hierarchy. Rigid hierarchy and hazing was a huge problem in the Imperial Japanese military.
The Joseon dynasty (1392-1910) had numerous issues but actually ageism wasn't as prevalent. Confucian scholars regularly made friends with each other over five or ten years of age difference. (You may think "so what?" but that pretty much never happens among students in modern Korea.)
Also, one reason that Joseon allowed Japanese landing at the start of the invasion of 1592 was that that division of the navy was led by Won Gyun, one of the worst admirals in Korea's history. Shortly after the war began he ordered his own fleet burned and ran away.
(Later, the legendary Yi Sunshin was imprisoned after being framed by Japanese espionage, and Won became the commander again. He then sailed the whole Korean fleet into a death trap at the battle of Chilcheonnyang, losing almost the entire fleet. Won ran away and likely died. We don't know exactly what happened to him.)
Confucianism and ageism existed far before the 19th century, the fact is that Chosun dynasty was the result of a military coup when the general tasked with attacking a weakened the neighbor Yuan dynasty (China) struggled to maintain legitimacy and thus forced upon a new state religion called Confucianism that ousted Buddhism. It was under this system rigid hierarchies regarding one's class, education, ageism were enforced. You can see the difference from the earlier Korean kingdoms like Silla that imported and cultivated Buddhism leading to female rulers and greater tolerance for "LGBT".
Chosun was rife with corruption, rigid social hierarchy except through state examinations one could join the ranks based on skill and stability. It was very stable because of the oppressive social hierarchy based on neo-confucian ideals. The royalty were corrupt and immoral (with the exception of Sejong who created the Korean alphabet) and the last Chosun queen herself spent most of the state's treasury on luxury goods.
Not many missed the Chosun dynasty, well apart from North Korea which introduced many of its traditions (punishing 3 family generations of state designated criminals is from this era), ageism, caste, oppression of women, sexual minorities and male chauvinism. In fact Japan's colonialism brought more equality and ended caste system with meritocracy. Any modern claims of "collaborators" or such are moot, because it was a failed monarchy state and Korea simply was without any political direction.
Korea's success is economic success is largely owed to the Japan (the first capital investments and transfer of technology was from Japan to normalize relations) and its imperial economic system of zaibatsu (chaebol) and the 5-year economic plan that the strongman Park Chung Hee used was straight out of Manchukuo.
anyways just rambling on here as I eat pistachios about my understanding of korean history as an outsider on a friday evening.
Aw man, this is a real bummer. I thought I'd weaned myself off of Gladwell, but his fabulism is embedded in my memories from way back :( he's so good at it!
The real L, as they say on Twitter now, is that we went so far on making scientific knowledge the only valid kind of knowing that fabulists must now come disguised as science (whereas in the past we all knew what Blavatsky, Gurdjieff, von Daniken etc were all about and could enjoy them for what they were).
I didn't see a rebuttal which substantially affected his argument. Most of it was the typical bandwagoning against his pop-style storytelling method. Very few disputes of fact. If Gladwell is guilty of anything it is to place a finely tuned modernly biased reference frame onto past events that did not/could not exist at the time but do become increasingly visible with the benefit of hind sight in a way that helps readers connect today with lessons from the past. Call that inauthentic if you will, but I think there are valuable insights to be gained and am glad he reaches such a wide audience in spite of the intellectual backlashing.
Well, the precise frustration people have with Gladwell (and his fans) is precisely this attitude. A very relaxed attitude towards rigorous evidence. I stopped paying a single bit of attention to him after the 10k hours claims, it was just mountains and mountains of poor or misleading evidence.
Believe in what he writes if you will, but I'm fairly certain that barely anything he writes is actually actionable.
Malcolm Gladwell may have overstated his theory, but askakorean is itself a biased source, and IMHO shouldn't be trusted too much. It is a fact that (1) Korean Air had a string of preventable accidents during that time, (2) pilot hierarchy in communication was believed to be a major factor that led to the Guam disaster, and (3) later Korean Air mandated everybody to speak English in the cockpit.
How much (3) contributed to the improved safety record is anyone's guess.
The following are direct quotes from the blog post:
> So, out of the seven KAL crashes that happened in the 20 year span between 1978 and 1997, three were a result of a military or paramilitary attack. Those three crashes clearly have little to do with pilot skills. […] that Gladwell would use incidents of terrorist attacks to pad the stats is darn near offensive. It is as if New York is being described as extra-dangerous in the early 2000s by including the number of deaths from the 9/11 attacks.
> Take a look at p. 204 of the report, which shows the point at which the pilots initiate their landing check sequence, thinking that they must be near the airport. For the next five pages--which ends with the moment of the crash--the pilots are communicating almost entirely in English. […] Gladwell explains that the new COO of Korean Air, David Greenberg (a former Delta Air Lines executive,) solved all the difficulties caused by the ambiguous Korean language by requiring the pilots to speak only in English. Gladwell writes: "In English, [the pilots] would be free of the sharply defined gradients of Korean hierarchy . . . Instead, the pilots could participate in a culture and language with a very different legacy." But Gladwell never reveals that Korean Air pilots were already speaking mostly in English, although that fact was absolutely plain from the transcript.
As I said, the blog makes weak arguments. This wikipedia page in Korean [1] shows seven KAL accidents in 1990s, with three of them causing deaths (one being the crash at Guam). If you went back in time and asked an average Korean "What do you think about KAL's safety records?" most of them would've said "This is unacceptable and something must be done!" Overall, Korea in the 90s was not a nice place, if your goal was staying alive.
Also, even the blog acknowledges that among the three incidents attributed to military/terrorist attacks, two of them started with pilot errors. KAL 902 was flying from Paris to Anchorage, but somehow made an almost 180 degree turn over the arctic, and ended up in Soviet airspace. It was shot at and forced to land on a lake: two died. The much more tragic KAL 007 also made a similar mistake, and was shot down, killing everyone.
I don't know about aviation, but among all the things a pilot should never do in the 70s-80s, I'd assume "fly into Soviet airspace unannounced" was pretty high in the list.
Also, if you look at the transcript of the Guam crash [2], it's hard to claim that pilots were communicating in 90% English. There's a lot of English, but they are technical words, like when you read off a checklist or verify readings. Everything that is unusual or requires a decision is spoken in Korean, like [all in Korean]:
> check the glide slope if working?
> why is it working?
> glide slope is incorrect
> since today's glide slope condition is not good, we need to maintain one thousand four hundred forty.
> not in sight
> let's make a missed approach [six seconds before impact]
From the transcript, it's clear that there was no way one could have said something like "The weather is too bad, let's go around" in English. Anything other than completely mechanical steps were decided in Korean.
Now, of course, that doesn't mean that Korean is inferior for communication or the culture is inherently flawed or whatever. But it seems reasonable to say that KAL had a company-wide culture of putting schedule over safety, and the hierarchy over pilots contributed to it. Because they were all Korean, the communication problem itself manifested in the Korean language.
Was it a stupid decision to ban Korean in the cockpit? Maybe, but if something is stupid and it works, then it's not stupid.
CRM is a hard skill to learn. It sounds easy on paper, but it goes against everything you've ever learned for how to have polite social interactions. Imagine you're an intern watching someone like Jeff Dean give a live demo, and you think the presentation is proceeding in a way that is going to cause a major outage. What do you do? I'm guessing that 99% of the time, you're not going to say anything. "He knows what he's doing" "It's not appropriate for me to interrupt a senior engineer's demo". Defeating that intuition is what CRM training aims to eliminate, and it takes a lot of work to override that hardcoded human behavior. (Even for Americans. I imagine it's even harder for Koreans.)
I'd really like to see # of hours of CRM training (and total training!) company wide vs. fatal accidents, and dig in even deeper to see if the training was even any good. (You could give every pilot 10 hours of bad training, and it wouldn't help the accident rate.)
Anyway, I'm sure someone has these numbers. My guess is that much more work was done than saying "just speak English" and the problem was magically fixed.
> Imagine you're an intern watching someone like Jeff Dean give a live demo, and you think the presentation is proceeding in a way that is going to cause a major outage.
It's more like you're Guido van Rossum watching Jeff Dean give a live demo, and the presentation is proceeding in a way that is going to kill you, Dean, and 200 random people from the audience.
> and the presentation is proceeding in a way that is going to kill you, Dean, and 200 random people from the audience.
Skipping a step here and there is rarely ever going to seem like it'll end in deaths of your and everyone else in the flight.
"We've flown this same route 2000 times before and never had an issue. My Captain is as old as my father and has been flying all his life. The weather is great, we're a little late, and he's probably right, skipping this pre-flight checklist this time isn't going to do any harm."
Yes, considered sacrosanct. However, my point was that if you skipped one, it's not a certainty that it would result in death. So if a captain said they should skip a checklist, the first officer might defer to their judgement and not oppose that decision.
I was responding to a comment where it was implied that the decision was a definite life-and-death decision.
It's not just Korean pilots though, deference to a KLM captain in the wrong was a critical link in the chain of events that led to the Tenerife disaster.
that is a very memorable incident - not least for the number of lives lost. I am not sure if it was deference as much as reverting to a native speech pattern in a critical moment.
"We are at takeoff" is what the pilot said and a native English speaker would have said something more like "We are taking off". A subtle difference - I grok what he was saying after the fact but in the moment the other's understanding was something like 'the KLM plane is currently at the starting point for takeoff'.
All these are just guesses on my part - I think of this incident often, particularly in terms of clarity and 'closed loop' comms under stress.
Malcolm Gladwell proved that he can make things look logical in hindsight, without the ability to have foresight. Which makes his conclusions entirely unimpressive.
I can tell you in very nice sounding, complex, and intelligent ways what yesterday's lotto numbers were, by the way.
The problem was that they didn't know the right phrases to declare an emergency. They kept saying "we're running out of fuel, sir". But meant they had not enough to go around.
Though I do agree that good airmanship would have been to tell ATC no and land the plane. A pilot may do that if lives are at risk.
Point is, both of you are correct, and this argument is pointless. The native language is a common fallback during emergency situations, in situations where phraseology is insufficient, to expedite communication.
This is absolutely incorrect! English proficiency is not a requirement if you are proficient in the official language of the country you are flying in. ATS provide services both in said-language and in English.
Because you're wrong. The lingua franca of the air is English. I've heard ATC recordings in multiple countries and they're all in English, including ones between non-native English speakers. If you come on this frequency and you don't speak French, you have no context at all for what's going on. It's incredibly dangerous and it shouldn't ever happen.
Common language is always needed - this is CDG, a large airport with many flights. It is important that all planes have situational awareness. If half are speaking French, how does the pilot coming from Seoul have situational awareness? What if he's sitting on the runway and doesn't know that the ATC just gave clearance to land in French to a pilot on the runway he's currently on?
ATC and pilots for commercial airlines should only be speaking English, regardless of their native tongue and where they are.
Unfortunately it only applies to airports with 50k international flights per year - the bar should be much lower than that. But of course, CDG qualifies.
Situational awareness in controlled air space comes to a large degree from air traffic control. Not from listening to communicatiom between traffic control and other planes.
It's not consistent. I believe in some countries it's all English. In Germany, big airports are English, and small airports are German. In the couple of small airports I've flown out of in France, it's French.
I've heard of some countries where the controller will speak to you in whichever language you speak to them, which can lead to issues with situational awareness if you're the only one on the frequency speaking English and you don't know where all of the other planes are.
Because doing so is a terrible practice, and I'm saying this as someone who is not a native english speaker.
The communication between the tower and the plane is not just for their benefit. Everyone else is on the same frequency, listening in, and needs to be able to understand what is going on. Not everyone is going to be able to understand french, while everyone flying in controlled airspace is going to understand english.
And France ain't a black hole like Africa when it comes to air traffic control. Also, using the language of the station is acceptable under official rules. French pilots speaking French in French air space are just fine.
I flew a lot of flights on United where they have a feature in the inflight entertainment system where you can listen in on the ATC comms (if the captain turns it on).
I've found that:
* French pilots generally speak in French in France or Quebec
* Russian pilots speak in Russian in Russia
* Mainland Chinese pilots speak in Mandarin in mainland China (but not in Taiwan or HK where English seems to be universal)
* Spanish/Latin American pilots speak in Spanish in those places.
Otherwise, it's generally English ATC including countries where it's otherwise not the native language, e.g. Japan, South Korea, Germany.
I just visited a traffic control room in Spain and an air traffic controller told me that Spanish and Latin American pilots speak Spanish to them (not only for landing flights, but also for transit flights say from Argentina to Germany while overflying Spain), and the same thing is practiced in France and Italy. So I am not sure you are right about "really not supposed to".
English is one of the official ICAO languages and it's mandatory for all pilots at least in EASA and FAA rules to be English proficient. But as far as I know it's not forbidden to use any of the other languages if both controller and crew speak that language.
Even the other way around, some small French airports have a listing as "French mandatory" for their radio frequencies. Which is quite a challenge for me as a foreign pilot not speaking French.
But overall it would be safer if all ATC comms were done in English. Because it's better for situational awareness if you can understand what others in the same airspace are doing.
> it's mandatory for all pilots at least in EASA and FAA rules to be English proficient
I would really like to know where you got this from. Been flying in France privately for 7 years, and not a single time have I been requested to speak English nor my aeronautical English skills had to be assessed for me to enjoy flying privileges.
Been also flying abroad, in northern Europe, where the local native language very much is the norm, unless a non-native is exchanging with ATC of course.
I am not IR. English proficiency is indeed a requirement for IR, but then it is only a subset of aeronautical activity. Flying in France comprises a minor yet significant share of non-commercial, non-IFR operations.
Source: I'm a flight instructor :-) the rule you're looking for is FCL.055
It specifies that you cannot use your license privileges unless you have a language endorsement on your license for English or the language used for RT for that flight. So if you have not passed an English test you are only allowed to fly in French airspace and speak French.
Maybe the French authorities will issue you a basic PPL without LPE, assuming you'll only fly in France. But many other CAAs will not issue licenses like that, and some won't renew a license without it even if you historically got it without LPE.
Again, being proficient in English or in the radiotelephony language used in the country of flight, as per FCL.055, does not equate to "[English being] mandatory for all pilots at least in EASA and FAA", as you said.
I could very well fly x-country from France to Germany if I am aeronautically proficient in both countries' languages, yet not being so in English.
> But many other CAAs will not issue licenses like that (...)
I know for a fact that they do in Spain, France, Germany, and Finland.
Generally ATC will switch to English when an English speaker comes onto the frequency, but local language is fine otherwise... country dependent, though. I haven't flow in France, but I understand it's mostly in French until someone calls in with English.
"Pursuant to requirements of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), ATC operations are conducted either in the English language or the language used by the station on the ground. In practice, the native language for a region is normally used"
The 777 pilot who analyzed and explained what was going on says otherwise. It will cause a master warning or something along those lines, but not cause AP to disengage. Which makes sense.
Source? In the Juan Brown (a 777 pilot YouTuber) video (https://youtu.be/cslSQB5mgyc) referenced in another comment, he specifically states that you must physically fight the autopilot for control if it's engaged.
If you listen to the ATC audio someone posted above, you hear the autopilot disconnect sound at 0:56 which is well after the incident began and all the other alarms were going off. This doesn't make sense. Did they not realize the plane was still on autopilot and were trying to hand-fly it and override the controls? I'm not jumping to any conclusions but it's very possible this was a normally functioning airplane.
> Originally Posted by Capt Kremin: There was nothing wrong with the aircraft. The crew had the wrong runway/approach selected and tried to override the AP manually. The subsequent go-around was incorrectly handled in that they retracted the gear before the initial stage of flap, hence the config warning.
Note that the rest of the posts after him disagree and point out that they were on a stable approach to the left most runway and the aircraft then turned a lot more to the left. That's not something that would happen if it was only a wrong runway selection.
In the original article link's comment section there is a post claiming to be from a passenger on an Air France 777 landing around 6am also on 5th April 2022 (AF655 DXB-CDG) (F-GSQK) which they say also did a go around after veering left close to the ground. Assuming similar weather conditions it would also have been an instrument landing using ILS data.
The topic of potential 5G interference with ILS comes up in the linked pprune rumors-news discussion and other early assessment like Juan Browne's Youtube linked elsewhere [1]
Not that 5G is the only explanation for any ground problems, but these days I am just as likely to believe the alleged passenger comment is mud in the water from some motivated agent provocateur or troll as I am to believe the story is possibly true. But either way the truthieness of it is interesting -- although for completely different reasons.
I sincerely hope that it takes no more than a fraction of a second to discard "nm" as "nanometers" and conclude that it means nautical miles, or at least some unknown term (if you are unfamiliar with customary aviation units).
Hate to bring up the AF crash in the middle of the ocean from Brazil to France. This was, at the very root of it, a cultural issue. Pure speculation (because it's fun to speculate): this seems related to similar issues in the cockpit.
> While climbing out and levelling off at 4000 feet the crew reported they had problems with the aircraft not following commands, the aircraft did not follow the commands
While there is little culture shared between human and airplane, this doesn't seem to be a cultural issue at all :)
How do you come to that conclusion? To the best of my understanding it was at least 3 things:
- strange choice of going through complex weather (somehow foreseen)
- failure (icing iirc) of the pitot airspeed sensors, raising multiple failures in the cockpit, and disengaging autopilot and putting the aircraft in a more hands-on (I'm not using the proper terms, there should be 'law' or 'envelope' somewhere) leading to a loss of trust of the crew in the cockpit. To me that was the linchpin, automation-exit failure.
- combined (sum of) commands from the pilot and copilot. They should have tried gaining speed (repetitive stall warnings) but the copilot was (in panic) trying to gain altitude while the pilot was putting the nose down. They both thought the aircraft wasn't answering their command.
- lack of crew communication. The 1st pilot was off in cabin, leaving his two cockpit crew without a clear chain of command, and the 2 remaining crew never talked about steps they were taking.
How do you square it was a cultural issue? Genuinely curious, as I make a point of sending the transcript to all the happy 'autopilot the low hanging fruit and let the human handle the special cases' dreamers I meet :-)
Well I think you said it: lack of crew communication.
I would argue that communication is rooted in culture. Is there a safety culture? Is it the culture to go through a checklist of items, even if routine?
If there was "automation-exit" failure as you describe, shouldn't there be a procedure and know-how on how to assume manual control. The devil would be in the details: not just outlining what a human being should do - but who that human being would be. Is it the pilot? The co-pilot? etc...
OK I'm questioning my bias here, since as a frenchman I might not see a cultural problem there.
There were definitely some communication problems, which I attributed to negligence (complacency or normalization of deviance) rather than national culture? And also a bit of hubris and lack of good health (I remember news that some of the crew had late night party, but some people can brush that off...). Is it something common in French or Air France (or some other culture cluster I don't see right now) aviation crews? I don't think so, but I'd like to be corrected!
Having been confronted to lots of human factors incidents and post-mortem I feel we can't easily eradicate cognitive load erors and momentary lack of awareness. Training and having 'skin in the game' helps alleviating these kinds of problems. Also reducing quirks like 'balanced commands' helps.
Having a system that only calls on you when it cannot do the work anymore because it's become too complex and now you decide without dumping minutes or more of context in your brain is the biggest automation fail and it will lead to more and more accidents. It's misunderstanding human psychology and most of human factors study.
Rereading the transcript (nightmare fuel...) I now remember the most harrowing fact: the crew didn't listen to the system anymore, they didn't trust the attitude monitoring systems, and didn't even talk about the noisy stall warnings that should have been a major 'let's stop and regroup we're missing something'. Utter panic and complete loss of trust of 'the machine'. Like discovering you've been lied to your whole life. Takes time to adjust and they didn't have much.
A good read on the subject is 'Automating should be like iron man, not Ultron'.
We (automated-system-operating humans) should be trained soon enough to be very skeptical of the 'automation' god, while still be able to trust it, when designed properly, with all its limits and failings... The 'astronaut watching earth' meme feels appropriate here: 'the system is busted' - 'always was'.
> why it is just fine that they were all speaking French in France
I've heard before that pilots are allowed to speak their native language with ATC in their own countries, but I'm still confused about the risk to foreign pilots in the same airspace, who will then potentially not understand some of the other conversations going on. I realize ATC would still give commands, answers, and clearances to foreign pilots in English, but wouldn't it occasionally be important for the foreign pilots to be able to understand the context of conversations that aren't directed to them?
Is the benefit of that just rare enough that it's not considered worth it?
Imagine for a second the international language of planes was German. As an American who's an international pilot you of course speak German, although not as well as you speak English.
Now imagine you're a bush pilot flying around Alaska in a Cesna flying near Anchorage. Imagine being forced to speak German to your fellow American ATCs.
These aren't bush pilots. They're professional airline transport pilots. Their job requires a proficient level of aviation English.
I've never heard of the English rule being ignored anywhere else except perhaps at tiny airports without proper radio discipline. Though I was only a private pilot.
It's not that it has to be in English because it's meant to be a better language. It's because the international community chose it. English is a requirement because lives were lost because of this (think Avianca 52). Foreign pilots have to do a language test to get their license. Even for a PPL. At least here in Europe.
Also the phraseology of radio communication is pretty specific and even a native English speaker wouldn't make heads or tails of it if they have no knowledge of aviation. It isn't really English as such.
It's no coincidence that the French invented the word Chauvinism :) I the multinational company I work for I've never seen a people so angered at having to speak another language than the French.
When you are in controlled airspace, you should be able to safely only listen to the commands given to you and ignore everything else. Your situational awareness is potentially better if you can process those other communications but strictly speaking, controlled airspace is just that… controlled by ATC. Also, if you are busy in the flight deck, you might completely disregard communication that is not to you no matter what language it is.
That’s only true in a class B airport in the US, ie the absolute busiest airports. Everywhere else, even with a control tower, ultimate responsibility lies on the pilot during vfr conditions. I imagine it’s similar in other countries ?
It's essentially the same everywhere, but these large planes are flying IFR not VFR and so they rely on the separation service provided by ground control. Ground control isn't allowed to provide separation service to VFR flights (although you can ask them for an advisory, and they will tell you about traffic that is relevant to you).
I suspect that similar to the Asiana 777 at SFO, this will turn out to be autopilot mode confusion on the part of the pilot, coupled with a late charge of instruction from ATC, and failure to monitor the flight path while trying to make the transition.
Very very unlikely. Every pilot knows exactly how to disconnect the autopilot, we train things like autopilot failure and recently trim runaway (which is closely related) in the sim.
Nobody would be screaming "stop it, stop it" instead of doing something if the button was working fine.
The title could have been translated better, as one of the comments on the source pages notes. It would be more accurate to say that the aircraft was not responding to controls/control inputs, scary stuff.
Why is it possible for a pilot to "fight" the autopilot? From my (layman's) point of view, it seems logical that either the pilot would be in control or the autopilot would be in control, but not both at the same time.
It's not that one or the other is exclusively controlling the plane. Either (or both) can grab the controls. It's kind of a subtle distinction, but the idea is you don't want the pilot's yoke or stick to ever be physically disengaged from the plane, because that's a mechanism that could fail, leaving the plane uncontrollable by anything. Similar with cruise control on a car: the accelerator physically moves when the computer engages, because it's actually pushing the accelerator. That's what you want, rather than the human needing to suddenly speed up and finding the pedal does nothing when pressed.
And once you accept that, then it's natural that there should be some play before one system disengages to favor the other. You don't want a sneeze to disable your autopilot.
198 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 241 ms ] threadListening to the distress in the pilot's tone made me uneasy. This is probably a good indication that the situation was very serious.
What's going on with those Boeing airplanes?
I don't think it's only Boeing airplanes where the autopilot will resist your attempts to override it with manual control inputs. If anything, I kinda expect that Airbus planes are even more opinionated about that type of behavior.
To add a bit more, it's interesting to note that at several points in the recording the pilots can be heard fighting the controls and apparently requiring force for that (https://youtu.be/VzCNKhFOPqU?t=25 for example). I know the two ariplanes are unrelated but this was also the case for 737 Max IIRC.
Yeah, when autopilot is engaged it requires a good bit of force to override it without just turning it off first.
I think the issue on the 737 Max was that there's been a known and studied system (called the MCAS IIRC) on Boeing planes that overrides pilot controls under some specific pre-determined circumstances and that system had been buffed to compensate for design flaws that were discovered too late to be corrected. On top of being faulty, that buffed system was also way outside of its initial intent and purpose (or rather the parameters guiding its operation were changed so much that it should have been addressed as a separate system and mandated specific training while they were trying to portray the plane as a simple evolution requiring no pilot re-training from earlier versions of the 737).
So, to me, it looks like yet another issue with a system overriding pilot controls for whatever reason.
More generally, this falls into that weird pattern of relying on external sensors which starts a chain of bad decisions leading to accidents (this was also a sensor issue with the Air France 447, although the chain was largely human this time, the pilots realizing way too late their repeated mistake).
https://internationalaviationhq.com/2019/11/23/language-used...
> The language used by Air Traffic Control is quite simple: whichever the pilot chooses to use. Normally this is between English and whatever the language is of the place that they are flying to/from. Although English is the only official language.
Radio English has specific alternative prononciations, which help avoid this, like "fife" and "niner".
There's also a defined cadence and order for many transmissions. If you read off the automated weather or a clearance in the usual order, it's easy to transcribe it. If you read it off out of order, it would sound the same [and just as difficult] to a non-pilot, but would be much more difficult for a pilot to write down.
However if it is clear enough and there is no ambiguity, the common way of saying numbers can be used, so zéro onze is acceptable. In normal conditions, no french speaker will mistake "onze" for "un", the latter should be "unité" anyways.
The main problem with "un" is that it sounds like "hein?", which means something like "huh?", the kind of meaningless words that punctuate conversations without even noticing.
The other day I asked for direction at a front desk and the lady told me to go to the office # "trente quatre vingt", I wasn't sure whether that was "3420" or "3080".
Pilots on international flights shall demonstrate language proficiency in either English or the language used by the station on the ground.
Regulation (EU) 2016/1185
(a) The air-ground radiotelephony communications shall be conducted in the English language or in the language normally used by the station on the ground.
https://www.easa.europa.eu/document-library/easy-access-rule...
https://youtu.be/cslSQB5mgyc
But the comment that they were criticizing was perfectly reasonable if the facts it was based on are correct (that the apparent packet loss was periodic, not random). There is another possible explanation (the interference itself was periodic), but their position and explanation is not at all unreasonable, never mind incoherent.
All that said, the more interesting comment is the most recent (at time of writing), from a passenger on another flight landing at the same airport, on the same day, suggesting that their plane suffered from a similar issue.
Your comment, however, is lazy and lacks substance. "I stopped reading because..." is a cancer on discourse. Read, then criticize, or STFU. (I confess I have been guilty of your approach in the past).
I stopped reading after seeing the AI generated comment because the generated text made an equal amount of sense as the other comments. In other words I don’t know enough to verify anything I’m reading.
This is a completely reasonable response.
Lol, no, you specifically called out the response that referenced AI, but now you're saying you didn't understand any of them? Sounds like you need to take a breath, relax, and stop shit-posting. Even your excuses are incoherent.
Not that I disagree but to many that means this is the perfect time to earn cheap internet virtue points baselessly speculating.
It would be interesting to tally up incidents like these, and see if there is some pattern to what type of plane, manufacturer, geographical location of incident etc.
No compelling difference between Airbus and Boeing here. The 777 and a330 are similar. 737 and a32x are very similar. Really the only outlier is the 737max, which isn’t enough to indicate some deeper problem with Boeing planes.
Looking forward to reading what happened but until then…
Interesting observation that the controllers and pilots were speaking French to each other. They’re really not supposed to do that (English is the standard for ATC, in part so other aircraft can maintain situational awareness) but that happens a lot in France.
A Colombian airline crashed in New York after running out of fuel due to similar deference to air traffic control.
That said I don't have any reason to think it actually does and you didn't supply one either. Are air traffic controllers even normally from the area where they work? Don't they get assigned?
New York controllers were more abrasive than they were used to and they had trouble speaking up. The controllers also didn’t communicate well amongst themselves and the pilots didn’t know their request for a sooner landing to due low fuel was not passed on.
Ultimately, the problem was the pilot’s failure to follow procedures. With the controllers being disorganized either due to lack of procedure or failure to follow it. Either of them could have prevented it.
Note: It is not sufficient to blame the pilots and move on. People make mistakes. Both sides need to be improved, because single points of failure kill people.
They then failed to tell passengers to brace before they crashed, which is thought to have contributed to injuries and even deaths.
The whole point is creating a defense in depth so one factor can’t take down a plane.
In the rest of the country that I've flown in, the controllers seem to be aiming for the voice of bored Apollo mission controllers.
Given the amazing volume they handle I’ve always found them nothing but crisp and professional.
If you’re also basing your opinion on those audio clips rather than actually asking for clearances or navigating the exclusions I think you might also have the wrong impression.
It is always the pilot’s prerogative to overrule ATC (if there’s a legitimate reason) and/or declare an emergency. And I assure you NY ATC would take it seriously if you do. They just don’t have time to dance around.
They are highly specialized on local facilities, weather, traffic flows, etc. The New York Metro area is one, if not the, most complicated airspace’s to control in the world. 4 major international airports (and tons of smaller airports/heliports) surrounding dense major cities with complicated weather, noise abatement procedures, and high congestion.
There are dozens of air traffic controllers of all different seats (supervisors, arrivals, ground, towers, helicopters) in the region. It’s a lot of coordinate.
This video gives a nice 3 minute overview: https://www.faa.gov/tv/?mediaId=1042
JFK, LGA, EWR, what’s the fourth one?
It doesn't have US customs and border protection facilities.
The US Army's ATC units had the motto of "Safe, Orderly, & Expeditious."
I learned about a number of air disasters and PanAm/KLM crash[1] in Tenerife 1977 really stuck with me. In the transcript a Dutch pilot says something like "We are now at take off" when he was indicating that the plane was in the process of taking off. (an idiomatic way of expression)
There was already much stress on the situation as an incident at another airport caused massive traffic rearrangement across Europe. Under stress we revert to native ways of expression. I tried to keep this incident in the back of my mind throughout the project, and since...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster
edit - include the transcrpt: https://tailstrike.com/database/27-march-1977-klm-4805/
It reminds me of the Japanese invasion of Chosun dynasty, how the rigid military/confucian structure made communication impossible and largely allowed unopposed landings by Hideyoshi's army.
I have seen low-rank white dudes get status upgrades in other Asian countries for a variety of reasons. One architect told me how he was hanging with high status Indonesians, and how he could name-drop NZ politicians (for example, the minister of finance) because our culture means low-rank citizens can personally know people in high-rank positions. Perhaps I can manipulate the Korean status game in my favour because my background is somewhat unmeasurable.
I'm many cases this would apply even if you are Korean but grew up outside the hierarchy (i.e. grew up in the US)
You'd have some status as a us citizen as a white person, but it's complicated and a double edged sword
It might have worked in the 60s or in South East Asia but certainly will not work anymore in East Asia, especially in a hyper connected world. In fact many foreigners who achieved celebrity status by lying were quickly cancelled.
By large, a non-asian person in East Asia is largely limited to an exotic animal at the zoo. Somewhat of a novelty for kids and adults to point and laugh "wow! we have foreigners in our country speaking our language".
You would see the same response towards a monkey suddenly speaking Korean or Japanese.
It is. you are using a special anecdotal case in a family situation (that same person would use honorifics towards their friends who are much older) to negate the rest of Korean society that uses one's age to decide who is above and below you, and the necessary honorifics. DK effect is quite laughable to see from a non-Korean.
I invite you to address your professor or sunbae or the elderly without honorifics and see their reaction. You wouldn't be able to use your race card very long.
Hmm I don't exactly know which way the terms were exported, but many people blame modern Korea's ageism on colonial Japan (at least partially), where the Japanese Empire tried to run itself as grandiose military barracks and trained everyone to be subject to the social hierarchy. Rigid hierarchy and hazing was a huge problem in the Imperial Japanese military.
The Joseon dynasty (1392-1910) had numerous issues but actually ageism wasn't as prevalent. Confucian scholars regularly made friends with each other over five or ten years of age difference. (You may think "so what?" but that pretty much never happens among students in modern Korea.)
Also, one reason that Joseon allowed Japanese landing at the start of the invasion of 1592 was that that division of the navy was led by Won Gyun, one of the worst admirals in Korea's history. Shortly after the war began he ordered his own fleet burned and ran away.
(Later, the legendary Yi Sunshin was imprisoned after being framed by Japanese espionage, and Won became the commander again. He then sailed the whole Korean fleet into a death trap at the battle of Chilcheonnyang, losing almost the entire fleet. Won ran away and likely died. We don't know exactly what happened to him.)
Chosun was rife with corruption, rigid social hierarchy except through state examinations one could join the ranks based on skill and stability. It was very stable because of the oppressive social hierarchy based on neo-confucian ideals. The royalty were corrupt and immoral (with the exception of Sejong who created the Korean alphabet) and the last Chosun queen herself spent most of the state's treasury on luxury goods.
Not many missed the Chosun dynasty, well apart from North Korea which introduced many of its traditions (punishing 3 family generations of state designated criminals is from this era), ageism, caste, oppression of women, sexual minorities and male chauvinism. In fact Japan's colonialism brought more equality and ended caste system with meritocracy. Any modern claims of "collaborators" or such are moot, because it was a failed monarchy state and Korea simply was without any political direction.
Korea's success is economic success is largely owed to the Japan (the first capital investments and transfer of technology was from Japan to normalize relations) and its imperial economic system of zaibatsu (chaebol) and the 5-year economic plan that the strongman Park Chung Hee used was straight out of Manchukuo.
anyways just rambling on here as I eat pistachios about my understanding of korean history as an outsider on a friday evening.
y'all have a good weekend.
In general I tend to question much of Gladwell's ideas these days seeing how many of them have been demonstrated to be wrong.
Believe in what he writes if you will, but I'm fairly certain that barely anything he writes is actually actionable.
How much (3) contributed to the improved safety record is anyone's guess.
> So, out of the seven KAL crashes that happened in the 20 year span between 1978 and 1997, three were a result of a military or paramilitary attack. Those three crashes clearly have little to do with pilot skills. […] that Gladwell would use incidents of terrorist attacks to pad the stats is darn near offensive. It is as if New York is being described as extra-dangerous in the early 2000s by including the number of deaths from the 9/11 attacks. > Take a look at p. 204 of the report, which shows the point at which the pilots initiate their landing check sequence, thinking that they must be near the airport. For the next five pages--which ends with the moment of the crash--the pilots are communicating almost entirely in English. […] Gladwell explains that the new COO of Korean Air, David Greenberg (a former Delta Air Lines executive,) solved all the difficulties caused by the ambiguous Korean language by requiring the pilots to speak only in English. Gladwell writes: "In English, [the pilots] would be free of the sharply defined gradients of Korean hierarchy . . . Instead, the pilots could participate in a culture and language with a very different legacy." But Gladwell never reveals that Korean Air pilots were already speaking mostly in English, although that fact was absolutely plain from the transcript.
Also, even the blog acknowledges that among the three incidents attributed to military/terrorist attacks, two of them started with pilot errors. KAL 902 was flying from Paris to Anchorage, but somehow made an almost 180 degree turn over the arctic, and ended up in Soviet airspace. It was shot at and forced to land on a lake: two died. The much more tragic KAL 007 also made a similar mistake, and was shot down, killing everyone.
I don't know about aviation, but among all the things a pilot should never do in the 70s-80s, I'd assume "fly into Soviet airspace unannounced" was pretty high in the list.
Also, if you look at the transcript of the Guam crash [2], it's hard to claim that pilots were communicating in 90% English. There's a lot of English, but they are technical words, like when you read off a checklist or verify readings. Everything that is unusual or requires a decision is spoken in Korean, like [all in Korean]:
> check the glide slope if working?
> why is it working?
> glide slope is incorrect
> since today's glide slope condition is not good, we need to maintain one thousand four hundred forty.
> not in sight
> let's make a missed approach [six seconds before impact]
From the transcript, it's clear that there was no way one could have said something like "The weather is too bad, let's go around" in English. Anything other than completely mechanical steps were decided in Korean.
Now, of course, that doesn't mean that Korean is inferior for communication or the culture is inherently flawed or whatever. But it seems reasonable to say that KAL had a company-wide culture of putting schedule over safety, and the hierarchy over pilots contributed to it. Because they were all Korean, the communication problem itself manifested in the Korean language.
Was it a stupid decision to ban Korean in the cockpit? Maybe, but if something is stupid and it works, then it's not stupid.
[1] https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EB%8C%80%ED%95%9C%ED%95%AD%EA...
[2] https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...
I'd really like to see # of hours of CRM training (and total training!) company wide vs. fatal accidents, and dig in even deeper to see if the training was even any good. (You could give every pilot 10 hours of bad training, and it wouldn't help the accident rate.)
Anyway, I'm sure someone has these numbers. My guess is that much more work was done than saying "just speak English" and the problem was magically fixed.
It's more like you're Guido van Rossum watching Jeff Dean give a live demo, and the presentation is proceeding in a way that is going to kill you, Dean, and 200 random people from the audience.
Skipping a step here and there is rarely ever going to seem like it'll end in deaths of your and everyone else in the flight.
"We've flown this same route 2000 times before and never had an issue. My Captain is as old as my father and has been flying all his life. The weather is great, we're a little late, and he's probably right, skipping this pre-flight checklist this time isn't going to do any harm."
> skipping this pre-flight checklist
Does this happen? My only knowledge about piloting is checklists are considered sacrosanct. Wouldn't skipping a checklist raise a red-flag?
I was responding to a comment where it was implied that the decision was a definite life-and-death decision.
"We are at takeoff" is what the pilot said and a native English speaker would have said something more like "We are taking off". A subtle difference - I grok what he was saying after the fact but in the moment the other's understanding was something like 'the KLM plane is currently at the starting point for takeoff'.
All these are just guesses on my part - I think of this incident often, particularly in terms of clarity and 'closed loop' comms under stress.
https://tailstrike.com/database/27-march-1977-klm-4805/
I can tell you in very nice sounding, complex, and intelligent ways what yesterday's lotto numbers were, by the way.
I can distinctly remember being taught this during a human factors mandatory training during my time at one of the 3 engine manufacturers.
I’m sure they would like to update their FAA approved training schedules based on the new information from askakorean.blogspot.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_52
Though I do agree that good airmanship would have been to tell ATC no and land the plane. A pilot may do that if lives are at risk.
Why Im being downvoted?
You may speak another language but English is first and relied upon.
This is absolutely incorrect! English proficiency is not a requirement if you are proficient in the official language of the country you are flying in. ATS provide services both in said-language and in English.
Unless you're born in the UK or Ireland that is. Because you're deemed native.
Yes, you will, in a number of EASA countries.
ATC and pilots for commercial airlines should only be speaking English, regardless of their native tongue and where they are.
It's pretty important - and it is actually EU law: https://www.thinkspain.com/news-spain/29531/air-traffic-cont...
Unfortunately it only applies to airports with 50k international flights per year - the bar should be much lower than that. But of course, CDG qualifies.
I've heard of some countries where the controller will speak to you in whichever language you speak to them, which can lead to issues with situational awareness if you're the only one on the frequency speaking English and you don't know where all of the other planes are.
The communication between the tower and the plane is not just for their benefit. Everyone else is on the same frequency, listening in, and needs to be able to understand what is going on. Not everyone is going to be able to understand french, while everyone flying in controlled airspace is going to understand english.
* French pilots generally speak in French in France or Quebec
* Russian pilots speak in Russian in Russia
* Mainland Chinese pilots speak in Mandarin in mainland China (but not in Taiwan or HK where English seems to be universal)
* Spanish/Latin American pilots speak in Spanish in those places.
Otherwise, it's generally English ATC including countries where it's otherwise not the native language, e.g. Japan, South Korea, Germany.
Even the other way around, some small French airports have a listing as "French mandatory" for their radio frequencies. Which is quite a challenge for me as a foreign pilot not speaking French.
But overall it would be safer if all ATC comms were done in English. Because it's better for situational awareness if you can understand what others in the same airspace are doing.
I would really like to know where you got this from. Been flying in France privately for 7 years, and not a single time have I been requested to speak English nor my aeronautical English skills had to be assessed for me to enjoy flying privileges.
Been also flying abroad, in northern Europe, where the local native language very much is the norm, unless a non-native is exchanging with ATC of course.
It specifies that you cannot use your license privileges unless you have a language endorsement on your license for English or the language used for RT for that flight. So if you have not passed an English test you are only allowed to fly in French airspace and speak French.
Maybe the French authorities will issue you a basic PPL without LPE, assuming you'll only fly in France. But many other CAAs will not issue licenses like that, and some won't renew a license without it even if you historically got it without LPE.
I could very well fly x-country from France to Germany if I am aeronautically proficient in both countries' languages, yet not being so in English.
> But many other CAAs will not issue licenses like that (...)
I know for a fact that they do in Spain, France, Germany, and Finland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_traffic_control
https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/646054-air-france-b777-c...
> Originally Posted by Capt Kremin: There was nothing wrong with the aircraft. The crew had the wrong runway/approach selected and tried to override the AP manually. The subsequent go-around was incorrectly handled in that they retracted the gear before the initial stage of flap, hence the config warning.
The topic of potential 5G interference with ILS comes up in the linked pprune rumors-news discussion and other early assessment like Juan Browne's Youtube linked elsewhere [1]
Not that 5G is the only explanation for any ground problems, but these days I am just as likely to believe the alleged passenger comment is mud in the water from some motivated agent provocateur or troll as I am to believe the story is possibly true. But either way the truthieness of it is interesting -- although for completely different reasons.
[1] https://youtu.be/cslSQB5mgyc
Nautical miles?
Read it as nanometres initially....
> While climbing out and levelling off at 4000 feet the crew reported they had problems with the aircraft not following commands, the aircraft did not follow the commands
While there is little culture shared between human and airplane, this doesn't seem to be a cultural issue at all :)
- strange choice of going through complex weather (somehow foreseen)
- failure (icing iirc) of the pitot airspeed sensors, raising multiple failures in the cockpit, and disengaging autopilot and putting the aircraft in a more hands-on (I'm not using the proper terms, there should be 'law' or 'envelope' somewhere) leading to a loss of trust of the crew in the cockpit. To me that was the linchpin, automation-exit failure.
- combined (sum of) commands from the pilot and copilot. They should have tried gaining speed (repetitive stall warnings) but the copilot was (in panic) trying to gain altitude while the pilot was putting the nose down. They both thought the aircraft wasn't answering their command.
- lack of crew communication. The 1st pilot was off in cabin, leaving his two cockpit crew without a clear chain of command, and the 2 remaining crew never talked about steps they were taking.
How do you square it was a cultural issue? Genuinely curious, as I make a point of sending the transcript to all the happy 'autopilot the low hanging fruit and let the human handle the special cases' dreamers I meet :-)
I would argue that communication is rooted in culture. Is there a safety culture? Is it the culture to go through a checklist of items, even if routine?
If there was "automation-exit" failure as you describe, shouldn't there be a procedure and know-how on how to assume manual control. The devil would be in the details: not just outlining what a human being should do - but who that human being would be. Is it the pilot? The co-pilot? etc...
There were definitely some communication problems, which I attributed to negligence (complacency or normalization of deviance) rather than national culture? And also a bit of hubris and lack of good health (I remember news that some of the crew had late night party, but some people can brush that off...). Is it something common in French or Air France (or some other culture cluster I don't see right now) aviation crews? I don't think so, but I'd like to be corrected!
Having been confronted to lots of human factors incidents and post-mortem I feel we can't easily eradicate cognitive load erors and momentary lack of awareness. Training and having 'skin in the game' helps alleviating these kinds of problems. Also reducing quirks like 'balanced commands' helps.
Having a system that only calls on you when it cannot do the work anymore because it's become too complex and now you decide without dumping minutes or more of context in your brain is the biggest automation fail and it will lead to more and more accidents. It's misunderstanding human psychology and most of human factors study.
Rereading the transcript (nightmare fuel...) I now remember the most harrowing fact: the crew didn't listen to the system anymore, they didn't trust the attitude monitoring systems, and didn't even talk about the noisy stall warnings that should have been a major 'let's stop and regroup we're missing something'. Utter panic and complete loss of trust of 'the machine'. Like discovering you've been lied to your whole life. Takes time to adjust and they didn't have much.
A good read on the subject is 'Automating should be like iron man, not Ultron'.
We (automated-system-operating humans) should be trained soon enough to be very skeptical of the 'automation' god, while still be able to trust it, when designed properly, with all its limits and failings... The 'astronaut watching earth' meme feels appropriate here: 'the system is busted' - 'always was'.
Sorry for the rant...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cslSQB5mgyc
Juan (an airline 777 pilot) also goes into why it is just fine that they were all speaking French in France.
I've heard before that pilots are allowed to speak their native language with ATC in their own countries, but I'm still confused about the risk to foreign pilots in the same airspace, who will then potentially not understand some of the other conversations going on. I realize ATC would still give commands, answers, and clearances to foreign pilots in English, but wouldn't it occasionally be important for the foreign pilots to be able to understand the context of conversations that aren't directed to them?
Is the benefit of that just rare enough that it's not considered worth it?
Now imagine you're a bush pilot flying around Alaska in a Cesna flying near Anchorage. Imagine being forced to speak German to your fellow American ATCs.
I've never heard of the English rule being ignored anywhere else except perhaps at tiny airports without proper radio discipline. Though I was only a private pilot.
It's not that it has to be in English because it's meant to be a better language. It's because the international community chose it. English is a requirement because lives were lost because of this (think Avianca 52). Foreign pilots have to do a language test to get their license. Even for a PPL. At least here in Europe.
Also the phraseology of radio communication is pretty specific and even a native English speaker wouldn't make heads or tails of it if they have no knowledge of aviation. It isn't really English as such.
It's no coincidence that the French invented the word Chauvinism :) I the multinational company I work for I've never seen a people so angered at having to speak another language than the French.
You're somehow presuming that there is no functional difference between being a native speaker and knowing a language as second or third language.
(16m00s into the video, discussing how ground activity near the localizer antenna can cause the signal to wiggle on approach.)
Nobody would be screaming "stop it, stop it" instead of doing something if the button was working fine.
Left turn may just be because of interference of the localizer.. which the autopilot was following.
With the autopilot on.. you have a fight on your hands until it disengages. (like in your Tesla :)
AP in the Tesla isn't too forceful, it disengages without much effort. The lane departure prevention, on the other hand, is much more insistent.
NOTHING RHYMES
And once you accept that, then it's natural that there should be some play before one system disengages to favor the other. You don't want a sneeze to disable your autopilot.