Communication in aviation
Effective communication is a very important aspect of
aviation safety. As the major means of communication between pilots and air
traffic controllers (ATC) is through radio communication, verbal communication
skills become crucial to the future of aviation safety.
Aviation communication is not only the communication
between pilots, copilots, ATC, and other aircraft but
it involves a variety of team players which includes, ground handlers, cabin
crew, construction workers, airline staff, security personnel, ramp workers,
airport operators, and other aviation specialists.
As a result of this, all professionals in the aviation
industry have a huge responsibility to improve their level of communication and
understanding to minimize the risks of catastrophic aviation accidents that
could be prevented with adequate communication.
Safety and Aviation
Communication
The major importance of communication in aviation is
to increase the level of safety and reduce accidents that could be prevented.
When aviation was still in its early stages, the general assumption was that
the sky was too expansive for two planes to randomly collide, until the
well-known collision of two planes over the Grand Canyon in 1956. That crash
prompted the establishment of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which
was the beginning of better aviation safety in all aspects of aviation,
including addressing proper communication.
Poor communications have contributed to a number of
deadly plane crashes since the beginning of modern air travel. In one instance
the flight crew reported to ATC that they were “running out of fuel” instead of
signaling an emergency situation with the words
“Mayday”, which is a specifically prescribed phraseology for the declaration of
an emergency. While “we’re running out of fuel” may sound like a declaration of
an emergency, in the context of controller-pilot communications, this statement
was interpreted as a mere concern and not an emergency situation. That flight
crashed after running out of fuel.
Aviation
Communication Issues
Communication issues and errors can spring up between
pilots and copilots, pilots and crew, pilot and ATC,
and among the ground crew. Major communication issues include:
Information Overload:
The higher the amount of information being
transmitted, the larger the chances of an error to occur.
Pronunciation Issues:
For non-English speakers, there is always a huge
probability of passing information with unclear pronunciation.
Misunderstanding:
Most errors in aviation communication are as a result
of a general misunderstanding. It could be caused from variations in the speech
rate, intonation, stresses, sentence structure or pauses of the communication.
Misunderstandings can be found in both native and non-English speakers.
Initiatives Taken
to Improve Communication
Due to the fact that aviation is an international
industry, pilots, copilots, and ATC would be required
to learn several languages for the proper information to be passed
appropriately and received easily by the recipient. In order to ensure a more
efficient and safer environment, the ICAO (International Civil Aviation
Organization) has adopted English as the official language of aviation.
All civil international pilots and other aviation
staff that are not fluent English speakers, must pass
an English proficiency test at an operational level to retain or gain their
professional license. The test is a 1-on-1 interview with an examiner, where
they will engage the pilot in conversations about specific aviation-related
occurrences, as through a dialogue between the pilot and ATC, or through
discussions of random subjects to determine the comprehension level of the
individual.
For all communications between ATC and the flight
crew, the priority is to establish an ‘operational context’ that identifies the
purpose of the transmission, location information, the expected timeline, and
specific flight directives, such as assigned altitudes and headings.
All subsequent messages should assist the operational
context by following the sequential order of the actions required, by grouping
related instructions in transmissions and by limiting the number of directives
in each transmission.
Communication effectiveness and efficiency represent
the most important pillars to maintain and improve safety in all airline
operations and proper care must be taken so that any miscommunications can be
minimized or avoided which might lead to an aircraft disaster.