English is standard worldwide for pilots to avoid confusion of different languages. In March 2014 the plane MH370 went missing and the world's newspapers are reporting officials and members of the public discussing the last words of the pilot(s) to air traffic control. Somebody suggested that we have only a translation and the pilot and control tower might have been speaking in Malay. But English is standard for communication between pilots and the control tower.
You can easily understand why. The Malaysian population is a mixture of the easy-going Malay majority speaking Bahasa Malay, the hard-working Chinese prominent in business will be speaking Chinese (Manadarin) language and probably one of two or three other dialects. The Indian minority speak yet another language. In addition Malaysia, like other Asian countries, has a small number of skilled expats and managers brought in from the USA, UK and Australia speaking English.
The aircraft control tower is dealing with a different plane every three minutes. So messages being clear affects the safety of a plane - as in this case. The worldwide standard for aircraft communication to prevent mis-hearing and misunderstanding is in the same language, mandatory English.
You can easily understand why. The Malaysian population is a mixture of the easy-going Malay majority speaking Bahasa Malay, the hard-working Chinese prominent in business will be speaking Chinese (Manadarin) language and probably one of two or three other dialects. The Indian minority speak yet another language. In addition Malaysia, like other Asian countries, has a small number of skilled expats and managers brought in from the USA, UK and Australia speaking English.
The aircraft control tower is dealing with a different plane every three minutes. So messages being clear affects the safety of a plane - as in this case. The worldwide standard for aircraft communication to prevent mis-hearing and misunderstanding is in the same language, mandatory English.
No comments:
Post a Comment