Air China "communicating " with ATC (edited)

[airedale49]

Don't mean to make fun of pilots who must use 'English', but kudos to the controllers for being able to communicate with various 'accents'. At about 3 minutes in, however, they could no longer keep a straight face! (edited)
 

(This is my first post. Hope I did it properly.)

Total time 5:15

[Squawk 7700]

That was a funny clip.    Good job on the audio following China Cargo to the tower  .

[KHAOS]

LOL. 

[atcman23]

Wow that guy didn't speak a lick of English.  Hysterical though (I would be laughing).  But it does show that the overseas airlines can get away with just about anything.

[rekno13]

That has to be a flight hazard.

[Casper87]

lol excellent clip.

To be fair the CAO pilot he could speak English, but couldn't pronounce any of it properly.

Level 4 or not?

C

[sykocus]

welcome to my world. on any given shift probably 1/3 or more of the pilots don't speak english as a 1st language. we don't get an air china flight every day, but asian, china southern and china eastern can be pretty bad. last week i did have an air china that sounded pretty similar. a while back a coworker gave an air china "alternate missed approach instructions". the pilot read them back. the next thing we know he is flying the alternate missed (he was still a good 10 miles from the airport). When asked why he went into a good 45-60 second rant that was 100% unintelligible. Even going back to the tapes we could not pick out even 1 or 2 words he was saying.

[rjs176cp]

He seems to understand fine but he cant speak at all. You can hear him struggling to put more than one word together.

His read-backs are correct though from what I can understand. Haha

[AviatorJud]

That is pretty crazy but I was able to understand almost all of it because I knew what to expect him to say, as the controllers did.  But if there had been an emergency or any out of the ordinary situation it could have been disastrous and it's because of that fact that every pilot in the world needs to be proficient in understanding and SPEAKING clear english.

[bphendri]

WOW.. reminds me of trying to talk to some of my ex girlfriends (I have dated allot of Asians..)....

Sometimes you just are like.. Umm yeah, can I get subtitles with that?

[ARMEDnPISSED]

From listening to LAX tower, I've found that KE/OZ pilots are easiest to understand followed by JL/NH pilots and lastly, CA/MU/CZ pilots.

[fholbert]

To be fair the CAO pilot he could speak English, but couldn't pronounce any of it properly.

My friend is the same way. He's from South Carolina.

[Acey]

Oh lord. That was painful to listen to.

[The Hoffspatcher]

Oh lord that was hillariously funny, poor Air China guy you can hear people in the b.g. at the C90 laughing at him!

I've found (generally) the following are pretty safe to speak to : Japan, Singapore, Thai (can be a bit hit-and-miss) and any European carrier

Chinese controllers at PEK/PVG seem to speak pretty good English but then agian, they probably have to keep up appearences for the western airlines eh? lol

[dave]

I am much less concerned about how he sounds - his English is infinitely better than my Chinese.  But that isn't the point.  The point is - what is the comprehension and situational awareness?  And there is no sure way to judge that from a recording...well, unless a pilot starts flying a missed approach procedure after simply being read alternate missed approach instructions, as one controller here observed one time.

There is a concerted push to improve this situation through various educational programs, but it is a real problem.  I personally care most about the safety issues.