Oops....

As usual the comments are all over the place.
 
Saw this on the news this am, sent the 777 right at the foothills with a minus elevation. Scary stuff. Then the same controller who sent it that way started yelling to head the direction it should have to begin with. I think aunt flow might be visiting the controller this week?
 
It's not even an operational error but yet it makes the news...yawn. :rolleyes:
 
Can't hear where she says left??? Doesn't matter anyway, if the pilot didn't have a language barrier, it wouldn't have progressed as far as it did. Saw that first hand working ATC in SE Asia...horrible.
 
Repeating "South!" obviously didn't work. Maybe the controller should have tried, "Turn heading 180 immediately!"
 
...and he was one of the few pilots who speak reasonable english at that airline...

US has, by far, the best ATC system in the world. The only thing they should practice more is how...and...when...to...speak...slowly...and...use...phrases...pilots...from...certain...countries...understand.
"Turn south" is over their heads. Turn heading 180 would've likely worked better.
 
She did say to turn right heading 180. Followed by an expedite. Then, if he can't understand what south means? Come on.
 
mtuomi said:
...and he was one of the few pilots who speak reasonable english at that airline...

US has, by far, the best ATC system in the world. The only thing they should practice more is how...and...when...to...speak...slowly...and...use...phrases...pilots...from...certain...countries...understand.
"Turn south" is over their heads. Turn heading 180 would've likely worked better.
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Not her or our problem that these guys don't understand "south". Doesn't seem like that tall of a request for them to understand the 4 directions of a compass.
 
James331 said:
Not her or our problem that these guys don't understand "south". Doesn't seem like that tall of a request for them to understand the 4 directions of a compass.
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Yes it is. If you allow foreign pilots to fly in your airspace - you should have controllers that speak ICAO. US ATC is very very far from ICAO standard ATC, which is sometimes confusing for foreign pilots.
ICAO standard ATC does not allow the use of cardinal headings, only three digits.
ICAO Doc 4444 12.4.1.3
 
If they can't understand "south" (it's that "S" on their compass for Pete sake), I'm cool with them staying out of our NAS.
 
James331 said:
If they can't understand "south" (it's that "S" on their compass for Pete sake), I'm cool with them staying out of our NAS.
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Would be better if controllers would know when to use standard ICAO phraseology. Would make flying a lot safer for all of us - keeping licensed pilots out from the NAS ain't gonna work.
 
English proficient?

South, that's like grade school level?
 
James331 said:
English proficient?

South, that's like grade school level?
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English proficient is for FAA certificates. ICAO has their LP grade. In cases like these, controllers should know when to use ICAO phraseology, and when to use FAA lingo. The sad fact is, that many pilots from certain countries simply can not communicate in "english proficient" level. The controller should be able to identify these pilots, and use standard phraseology with them. Many controllers can (I've flown a lot around Florida where they train these "english proficient" pilots...), but this one obviously couldn't.
Still, it's obviously 95% pilots fault in this case, but had the controller adjusted a bit in her 5%, it would've made it less hairy for everyone involved.
 
mtuomi said:
Yes it is. If you allow foreign pilots to fly in your airspace - you should have controllers that speak ICAO. US ATC is very very far from ICAO standard ATC, which is sometimes confusing for foreign pilots.
ICAO standard ATC does not allow the use of cardinal headings, only three digits.
ICAO Doc 4444 12.4.1.3
Click to expand...

There's very little difference in phraseology between ICAO and FAA. In this case, they're both the same in that a vector is used with a magnetic heading in 3 digit degrees. When the pilots in question didn't respond to standard phraseology of a right turn to 180, she used non standard phraseology or "plain language" by ICAO definition. Completely authorized and in this case, I'd say warranted.

The pilots are required to know north, south, east and west IAW the Aeronautical Telecommunications manual.
 
Velocity173 said:
There's very little difference in phraseology between ICAO and FAA. In this case, they're both the same in that a vector is used with a magnetic heading in 3 digit degrees. When the pilots in question didn't respond to standard phraseology of a right turn to 180, she used non standard phraseology or "plain language" by ICAO definition. Completely authorized and in this case, I'd say warranted.

The pilots are required to know north, south, east and west IAW the Aeronautical Telecommunications manual.
Click to expand...

I guess the "what are you doing" was the one that caused the EVA pilots to have a mental overflow. The sad thing is, that they were probably running a checklist(because their training says aviate, navigate, communicate, and no matter what, checklists have priority nr. 1 over anything), or trying to figure out if they need to do a left or right turn(without realizing it makes no difference here) because that wasn't specified in a manner they are used to. Chinese/Taiwanese are ridiculously bad in making decisions in non-standard situations.

Everything the controller did was "authorized", but they should remember they are talking to pilots who sometimes are unable to understand the language they speak with the controllers. Many Asian pilots simply remember the "correct" readbacks but do not understand the meaning of what's being said.
 
And when that happens they threaten our pilots and citizens in our NAS, if ya can't grasp the language, frankly it's no skin off my back if you stay out of our airspace.
 
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