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Comment by herpderperator | Hacker News Reader

Why aren't they speaking English? I thought the communications were always supposed to be in English.

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.

https://www.easa.europa.eu/document-library/easy-access-rule...

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.

I too thought that but apparently it is not the case.

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.

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.

Especially when it comes to numbers!

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.

Per the ICAO:

Pilots on international flights shall demonstrate language proficiency in either English or the language used by the station on the ground.

Air crews tend to speak their home languages in their home countries, according to another video posted upthread.

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.

Apparently they naturally settled in French, I assume crews are bilingual and in any need for clarification where English would help they'd do so.

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