Good to all I am Spanish with 3 years of experience in air simulation, although I started in IVAO now I have made the leap in VATSIM, the other day I made my first flight to USA, in particular to KSFO and I had many problems to understand the ATC via voice since my English level is very low and if they take me out of the standard phraseology I get blocked and I cause problems to ATC. What advice do you give (apart from the most obvious one which would be to learn English) to fly in these cases?
Flying via text? I understand that when ATC has traffic it can be complicated for them to attend you, any specific tutorials? I would like to fly all over the world but I understand that here the language is fundamental even if you know how to do procedures.
Well, VATSIM semi-mandates sufficient English knowledge with CoR §1.01 A. It’s a weirdly formulated regulation because it uses “should” which technically means that it’s completely fine to not know a single bit of English, but even in places where other languages - e.g. Spanish - are allowed for aviation communications, vACCs can’t mandate their controllers to know these other languages but always have to offer ATC as well as all the background stuff in English, so in practice knowing English is mandatory regardless…
All that legalese aside: Spanish is a language rather commonly used in an aviation context. Many Spanish-speaking countries allow aviation communications in Spanish and this is usually also the case on VATSIM, so you may find it easier to fly there (e.g. the applicable South-American countries, some Central American ones, Spain itself of course, …) - but if you come across the odd non-Spanish speaker controlling there (e.g. a visiting controller), you will still have to be able to switch to English.
I know how you feel. As a native English speaker, I don’t have as many issues as you will have, but the problem is really all about what is meant by “standard phraseology” because that doesn’t really exist globally. Each region has its own way of phrasing things.
Even when there is an accepted standard phraseology in one location, there very often appears to be a drift towards the use of colloquialisms and other loose phraseology, none of which is included in the standards document. The US may be particularly prone to that issue.
My advice, in the short term, is to take a look at the UK and their CAP413 which seems to be very rigorously follwed by Vatsim UK ATC. Once you have become comfortable there, you will be well armed to fend off the sometimes quirky, sometimes plain ugly, sometimes apparently unsafe language used in other areas. And that, sadly is true of RW practice - you can imagine what some Vatsim ATC officers do with that background…
Thank you very much for your answers 