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Flying into French Language Only (FR-only) airfields (and French ATC ELP)

Airborne_Again wrote:

Pronunciation, stress, rhythm, and intonation, though possibly influenced by the first language or regional variation, almost never interfere with ease of understanding.

Whoever wrote that has no idea about language. Just try to understand someone from the North of England….. or, for German, from some Alpine valley. Good luck.

172driver wrote:

Whoever wrote that has no idea about language. Just try to understand someone from the North of England….. or, for German, from some Alpine valley. Good luck.

Who’s to say that they should get ELP6 or GLP6?

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Large portions of the UK speak virtually unintelligible English, to the extent that it has to be subtitled (or, in modern BBC political correctness, edited right out because subtitles make the people look stupid) from news broadcasts, but those people don’t bother to get into the PPL scene.

I’ve had a PPL for almost 54 years. Original PPL in non-radio aircraft. The guy in Lincolnshire had great difficulty in understanding my best efforts at English when we visited to buy his plane in May. I did 2 years of English at Aberdeen University.

Maoraigh
EGPE, United Kingdom

172driver wrote:

Whoever wrote that has no idea about language.

Not so sure about that. I’ve had my share of experiences with really good language teachers thankfully, one of them being my wife. I find that I am getting comfortable with a language when I am capable of thinking in one. Took me a while to figure out, but one of my teachers told me so after I came back from my first language course in the UK in summer school in about 1980. I was dreadful in languages before that but my marks jumped radically after those 5 weeks, even though the immersion was less than perfect… the family I stayed with consisted of a cockney male and a Northumbrian female which produced quite some fully expressions. But what immersion did to me is that it made me interested and I bought a couple of records and videotapes to listen to at home. I found that with every stay (I spent about 5 consecutive summers in Eastbourne) i got more secure. Today, I can say that it does not make a difference to me anymore whether I have to communicate in English or German…. wish it was the same for French and Bulgarian (which are my other two languages) but it’s perfectly clear to me that it is the use which makes one proficient!

If I see people who struggle with English, I will tell them the same thing over and over again: Go to England, alone, if possible live with a family and just immerse yourself in the language. I’ve been to both the UK and the US extensively and would not want to miss any of those stays, not only for language but it certainly helped.

Same goes for ATC. I bought my first aviation radio when I was 14 and had had only 2 years of English… but when I did my PPL at 18 the hours listening made talking to ATC very easy from day one. I never took one hour of instruction in RT, neither IFR nor VFR. But I am perfectly clear why people struggle who think they can learn it in a classroom or by books.

The sometimes irrational fear of speaking should really go away if you immerse and have no choice.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

The guy in Lincolnshire had great difficulty in understanding my best efforts at English when we visited to buy his plane in May

I wonder if he flew non-radio (as quite a few do)?

I bought my first aviation radio when I was 14 and had had only 2 years of English… but when I did my PPL at 18 the hours listening made talking to ATC very easy from day one

I think that makes a huge difference because most of ATC talk is in the category that you mostly know what they are going to say and, especially outside the UK where ELP does not come naturally, the range of phrases used by ATC is yet more limited. I tend to find that non-flying passengers cannot understand ATC at all, while I usually can. And when I can’t, they never got any of it either. Language is very context-sensitive and I don’t think aviation raio comms, with the often crappy radios and poor ELP, would work if it wasn’t for standard terminology.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
It certainly does. The “ICAO Language Proficiency Rating Scale” from ICAO Annex I states:

Pronunciation, stress, rhythm, and intonation, though possibly influenced by the first language or regional variation, almost never interfere with ease of understanding.

This is the level 6 criterion. I test almost exclusively French pilots, of whom probably only 5% achieve a level 6, generally for reasons of structure and fluency rather than pronunciation.

However, I would say that pronunciation is often one of the hardest for me to assess because I am very accustomed to hearing French people speaking English, so even when they have a very strong accent I still understand them, even though the wider aviation community probably would not.

LFCS (Bordeaux Léognan Saucats)

Peter wrote:

Language is very context-sensitive and I don’t think aviation raio comms, with the often crappy radios and poor ELP, would work if it wasn’t for standard terminology.

Well… RT is even today something I enjoy massively and I would be very sorry to ever see it go away in favour of electronically transmitted clearances e.t.c. even if that may be a safer way of doing it. I have countless experiences which were too good fun to have missed but of course you do have a point. Trying to negotiate flight levels with Mumbai Radio on HF is huge fun (mostly) but also a very archaic way to do business… Out of Male in a 330 our flight got the desired level merely by the impressive language skills of our copilot who did such a fantastic indian accent that the poor MD11 guys of Alitalia had no chance. Or I take huge fun listening to folks like “Kennedy Steve” Abraham on youtube. Highly recommended. Or listening in on the HF transmissions over the NATL in the 1980ties (which are more or less the same today still) and collecting QSL cards from flight crews of Swissair whom I had overheard calling 30W.

But I guess the big wake up call towards standard terminology came on that foggy day at Teneriffe where the combined efforts of two very overloaded spanish controllers and an overzealous Dutchman cost over 500 lifes. I’ve had the great fortune to meet both of the surviving Pan Am pilots later on and their tale was one of which nightmares are made.

Alas, standardisation can get you far, but only so far. Yes, it is vital for normal ops. But life does not adhere to normal operation procedures. What if you have to explain an emergency to a controller in order for him to give you the best assistance available? We had a Polish guy with a Cirrus who lost his secondary electrical bus and never managed to tell the approach controllers that he actually was deep in smelly stuff but kept a stiff upper lip which cost him and 3 others their lifes ultimately because he never told ATC that his avionics were hugely degraded and he himself overloaded. Did he understand the questions ATC asked him? I doubt it. Did he know how to tell ATC that he needed help and what the request particularly? Probably not.

Listening to ATC is the best way to learn how to cope with it. It will also show you very much that standardisation is very important by no means enough. VAS Aviation on youtube has a lot of very good clips of ATC in particular situations. And Live ATC with its archives e.t.c. can even give you the chance to relive your own exchanges with controllers.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

To fly to an FR-only airport, does the PIC have to be French speaking, or is it allowed to have a French speaking passenger? If the latter, does the passenger need to have a PPL?

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I would guess the pax would need a R/T certificate which is now part of the PPL in most countries.

LFPT, LFPN

You can get that standalone though I think. Isn’t it just the radio exam out of the PPL set?

Years ago, when the UK Ministry of Defence sold off a load of ex mil Gazelles at about £80k, flyable only on a Permit, they were banned for passenger carriage, so a lot of the pilots got their wife (apologies, but you get my drift) to wear a crew-style one-piece and pretend to be the radio operator. Years later this was sorted IIRC. The certified Gazelle was £250k…

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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