EL2 Pilots in the Australian General Aviation environment – radio mis-communication

Communicating effectively via the radio in General Aviation (GA) is a challenging task for most pilots. This is even more challenging for non-native speakers of English who are required to master not only a second language but “Aviation English” to communicate with both Air Traffic Control (ATC) and other pilots. In a preliminary study (Estival & Molesworth, 2009), we investigated the extent to which the English language proficiency of pilots whose native language is not English affects their ability to effectively communicate with ATC and its potential impact on safety outcomes.

On the one hand, there is some evidence to suggest that the use of English as a second language may contribute to communication difficulties and that the standard of English employed by EL2 pilots is one of the challenges of radio communication in GA. On the other hand, we also found that pilots consider communicating with ATC to be the least challenging task and that both EL2 and English native speakers rank understanding other pilots as the most challenging task in aviation communication. Both native speakers and EL2 pilots find it difficult to understand other pilots and both experience the same problems communicating with ATC.

This may be explained in part by the intensive training provided to ATC and by the standardized phraseology now regularly employed (Cushing, 1994; Hutchins & Klausen, 1996). In addition, there is evidence to suggest that the quality of the transmission between two aircraft negatively affects effective communication (Shimizu et al., 2002) and that other factors contribute to this problem (e.g., noise and operator expectation).

Our current research is directed towards investigating the underlying problems associated with radio communication, such as comprehension, phraseology, intonation, speech irregularities and the use (or misuse) of pauses, and towards quantifying the frequency of communication problems within GA.