The Language of Aviation

In the real world the international language is English. Exceptionally, pilots may talk to ATC in the local language. Thsi has caused problems in the past, and does cause problems within Vatsim - especially on the training side for Vatsim ratings.

Here is an example of a real incident:

Using a country’s native language for communication with local crews potentially prevents international crews from achieving the desired level of situational awareness

On 6 October 2022, a solo student pilot departing Seville in a light aircraft was instructed to hold short of the active runway on reaching it but, without the controller noticing, then entered the runway. An Airbus A320 already cleared to land then called that there was a light aircraft on the runway and after initially just repeating the clearance, the controller then saw it. The context for the conflict was assessed as the controller’s use of English for PA28 communications and Spanish for A320 communications and the absence of any requirement to activate controllable stop bars in visual daylight conditions.

Whilst exceptions are made, as illustrated here, incidents and accidents will continue. Just saying …

No, there are 4 official ICAO aviation languages: English, Spanish, French and Mandarin. Please keep this in mind.

VFR traffic is usually talked to in local language, but I also agree that IFR traffic should always speak English, no matter what country and what nationality the airline crew is. But the reality is that it will not change, we have to live with it that French airlines will speak French in French speaking countries (it’s not only France!) and Spanish speaking crew will be speaking Spanish in countries that is using Spanish as its national language. Tough luck.

Mitigation of this threat: learn at least basic aviation phraseology in French and Spanish! I know both a bit and can follow those ATC-pilot conversations on the radio.

4? When where the 2 other working languages dropped?
And whatever does that have to do with the topic at hand?

I completely agree that in the real world, everybody speaking English would greatly aid in everybody’s situational awareness, although, as Andreas already alluded to, particularly in the general aviation community, you will find a relatively high number of people who don’t speak English very well or even at all, so any transition to English only in applicable countries would need to be done in a way that doesn’t require these people to suddenly learn a whole new language to continue flying.
In the case of your example, however, it seems like the mixed language use on frequency was only a contributing factor and with the pilot’s relatively low English level, it may not even have helped that much if the other aircraft had communicated in English.

But I wonder where exactly you see problems with this on VATSIM? Sure, situational awareness is also nice in our simulated environment, but nowhere near as critical as in the real world. At the same time, VATSIM’s strict rules that no languages beyond English can be required from controllers means that people who don’t speak English well enough or at all are effectively being excluded from our community (out of the eight billion people alive today, only about 500 million are L1 speakers and another 1-2 billion are L2 speakers, so roughly 75% of all people do not speak English at all, and among the ~25% that do, there are certainly also quite a few people who don’t feel too comfortable with their English skills). When a local language is available for aviation RTF in a country/at an airport/in a certain area/etc., making its use available on the network can be a great opportunity for speakers of those local languages to still participate in the network even if they don’t speak English. Likewise, there are a lot of benefits to local language use in training as - once again - neither the instructors nor the trainees are professionals and can often communicate much more effectively in the local language which makes the training process more efficient and reduces the likelihood of misunderstandings due to documentation being incorrectly or badly translated from the local language into English. At the very least, the decision should be largely left up to the vACC.
The only real benefit of having everything uniformly and only in English on the network - particularly in places where this is not (yet) the case IRL - that I can see is for controllers who don’t speak that local language of a place they want to visit, but in my experience those are much rarer than the people who struggle with English and tend to have an even smaller impact on the staffing level in the vACCs they are visiting.

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The problem in Vatsim comes with standardising the Vatsim Pilot ratings around the world. If a student only speaks his local language/dialect, then his examination for his rating would have to be taken in that language/dialect. That means finding an examiner who can speak that language/dialect. This is not always possible. In such a case, how would Vatsim be able to ascertain both the standard of training and/or the standard of examination. If Vatsim cannot do this, then differing standards could, and would probably, exist in the differing areas of the world. This is an ongoing problem within Vatsim, so any practicable solutions would be very welcome.

I have included ‘dialect’ in the above deliberately. I have it on good authority that the language spoken in Brazil, for example, differs from that spoken in Spain, and even in the Canaries Islands, even though all nominally speak Spanish.

Ah, I misinterpreted what you wrote then - when you said “Vatsim ratings”, I thought you were talking about ATC ratings instead of pilot ratings (perhaps should have looked at the category you posted in :sweat_smile:). That makes your point more understandable for me, but don’t vATOs also have their own examiners? If so, I still think it would be a shame to not offer the training in a local language to also provide an opportunity for pilots with poor or no English skills to get a VATSIM pilot rating (especially when we consider that VATSIM pilot ratings are purely decorative and don’t grant you any additional rights on the network) if they have enough personnel who speaks that language, for the same reasons I mentioned above.

Oh, and the Brazilian dialect of Spanish differs from Spanish as spoken in Spain because it is not, in fact, Spanish but Portuguese :wink:

Brazil does not speak spanish. I have no idea where you got that from. We speak portuguese

I’m not entirely sure that would be the case. Even on large international airports, it’s normal for domestic flights to use the local language. While it’s hard to say what percentage use the local language vs english, I belive it’s fair to assume that pilots use it because they are more familiar with it. “Forcing” them to use english could actually reduce awareness in that case.
In theory, having all pilots speaking the same language sounds great, but the reality is that requiring all pilots/controllers to speak fluently on another language is impractical.
As an example, if you look at a channel like https://www.youtube.com/@SBGRLIVE, that covers one of the busiest airports in South America, it’s very easy to see how often pilots use portuguese, and also the difficulty some controllers have in understanding some things that are non-standard/uncommon with pilots speaking english.
Is it ideal? No, but requiring fluency in a second language from every single pilot and controller operating on airspace that handles international flights could also backfire

Whoops! Apologies to all - I really knew it was Portuguese, and my reference country shouild have been Portugal.

I actually agree regarding offering exams in the local language, but Vatsim has been trying to ensure standards across all countries and ATO’s by assigning exams to examiners from outside the examinee’s ATO, otherwise it becomes a matter of “marking their own homework”.

Are there 6 official ICAO languages? What else, Swahili and Afrikaans? Ok, I forgot Russian, what else?

I was simply trying to point out that English is not “the world language”. When we were still allowed to fly to Russia, we sometimes had to bring a radio operator for certain remote airports where nobody spoke anything else but Russian. So much about “the international language of aviation is English”.

And General Aviation is full of pilots who do not speak English. Is it good? No. But it is the reality and since many VATSIM members demand the highest possible amount of “immersion” and “realism”, it should also be simulated this way: in many countries VFR and sometimes even IFR traffic will communicate in the local language.

Oh, and don’t get me started on “immersion” and “realism”, since almost everybody here is operating their airline cockpit without a second pilot on the flightdeck.

No, you don’t speak Portuguese, you speak “Brasileiro” (which is much nicer to listen to than Portuguese of Portugal - I know, I lived in Brasil for a year and learned the language and now I work for a Portuguese company) :slight_smile: (and I also enjoy Portuguese of Portugal, it’s just much faster and harder in intonation)

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I personally think that it is highly unprofessional for any real world CPL/IFR rated pilot to not be fluent in at least moderate English. English is a very simple language (in terms of what is needed in aviation) and it would make communication for non-speakers of the local language much easier. I don’t care what people do at smaller, regional airports. But all international airports should insist on using English as RTF language to enable all users of the airspace to understand what is going on. There have been too many hairy situations that almost resulted in a tragic loss of machines and lives, because of this mixture of languages. Sometimes it takes a third crew to point out a wrong readback of another crew to ATC and saves the day on a regular basis. I’m lucky to know the basic aviation phrases in French, Spanish, Portuguese so I am able to follow these radio messages.

Of course there is little fluency in English when commercial pilots are allowed to speak in their own language all the time! Every non-native speaker needs to practice English on a regular basis.

If you cannot speak English, you don’t belong in the cockpit of an aircraft that requires you to hold a CPL/IFR/ATP licence (in the real world).

Russian, corrent, and Arabic is also an official language.
Regardless, it’s not the status as official language that dictates whether or not it can be used over communications, as I surely hope you are well aware.

English is the universal language for aviation, and every ATC station that allows flights for other countries to pass by needs to provide services in it. This doesn’t mean that a local language cannot be use, but such provisions are defined by local AIP. Again, regardless if the country speaks an ICAO WORKING language or not

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Arabic, sure! Although I rarely hear anyone speaking Arabic on frequency when I fly across Saudi, Egypt, Jordan and the like.

I agree, but the reality is that making it a requirement is not an easy task, and would likely have the opposite effect short/medium term.

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Interesting. Seems a bit overkill to me, considering that pilot ratings don’t grant any further rights on the network (and from what I understand, there are also absolutely no plans for this to happen in the foreseeable future) while for ATC ratings, which do grant additional rights on the network, vACCs examining their own trainees is the norm for any vACC that I’m familiar with.

It definitely has to be a slow, gradual transition. With the aviation RTF licenses here in Germany, e.g., it might make sense to initially remove the option for new German only licenses to be obtained so that after a while, you will only have people with English only or English and German; from there you could slowly add the availability of English at every airfield, then slowly remove the availability of German, and so on. In any case, it would definitely need a couple of decades to work out and probably even longer for the many places where this issue doesn’t just affect the VFR GA community, but every single type of operation if the short/medium term communication issues are to be mitigated.

so ? if AIP allows it, they can
the same way you can use German in Langen/Bremen/Munich ACCs, or Polish in Poland…

I have been delighted with all the responses to this topic. I have to declare an interest here: I was for the summer of 2024 the Vatsim CFI, and my responsibility was to implement the policy of separating the Vatsim Pilot rating exams from the ATO doing the training. It raised many issues, several of which you have expressed here.

I don’t think there is a good solution yet. The old system of internal ATO exams was not working universally as desired, with some very dubious results which the new system highlighted. The fact that a Vatsim rating does not give any privileges, as mentioned, to the successful student is a problem. One way that illustrates this is seen in the very low take-up of pilot rating courses across the entire pilot community. Most who do take up such training do so for personal satisfaction and a wish to learn. The language issue was brought up because it highlights these problems.

What is needed is constructive criticism, i.e. don’t just say what is wrong, but offer ideas on how to improve the situation. Contributors to this thread will hopefully be the pool from which such ideas will come.

Well, I think first of all, we would need to figure out what we want the VATSIM pilot ratings to be. Without a specific goal it’s gonna be quite difficult to bring up constructive criticism as everyone will be arguing from a different premise (i.e. what they personally think they should be or what they think others think it should be), whether that is because no such goal has been defined or hasn’t been communicated well enough or at all. Also a big issue with many other parts of the network, but I digress.

The way I see it, there are essentially three options.
Option 1: It’s just a way for interested pilots to learn aviation-related theory more in-depth without gaining anything more than increased knowledge and personal satisfaction. That would also mean that there is no need for demanding a certain training standard because some vATOs setting high standards while others produce “dubious results” would not have any actual effect - and pilots who want that high standard can just choose a vATO with a reputation for that instead of one with a reputation for being easy. Neither would a lack of standardization have any ill effects.
Option 2: Pilot ratings become a definitive requirement to fly on the network, similar to the real world, meaning pilots would, e.g., need a P4/ATPL to fly airliners on the network, or a P2/IR to fly under IFR. That would certainly justify high training standards and the implementation of crosschecks between the vATOs to prevent them from “marking their own homework”, as you say, and it would likewise justify a certain standardization.
Option 3: A compromise between options 1 and 2, where only some types of operations are restricted to holders of a respective pilot rating while everything else would remain open to everyone. There are of course many different ways of going about this, though I would imagine the all of them would have one thing in common: addressing specific issues related to pilots’ ability of conducting the relevant type of operation - and it will probably be impossible to do it fairly (and even if it were, I doubt it could adequately address the underlying issues and would instead just shift them to other areas).

Frankly, option 2 is the only one where I could see the current pilot ratings the way they exist make sense. With option 1 there is no reason to have actual ratings and with option 3 the real world PPR->IR->CPL->ATPL would most likely be way too confining. Assuming that the vast majority doesn’t want a system like option 2, I think it may be best to rethink the way the network approaches pilot training entirely and for that, regardless of what we do, we would first need to formulate a goal/a set of goals as a general framework, as I said in the beginning.

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