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Aviation English and Safety

Robert Fowler

Aerospace Department, Middle Tennessee State University

AERO 1020: Theory of Flight

Professor Robert Fowler

January 25, 2021

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Aviation English and Safety

According to Baugh and Stolzer (2018), communications problems in aviation can occur

between pilots or between pilots and air traffic controllers. These problems can occur between

native English speakers as well as any combination of native and non-native English speakers

(Baugh & Stolzer, 2018). Findings presented at a National Aeronautics and Space

Administration (NASA) workshop in 1979 concluded that a major cause of air carrier accidents

was due to human error. The specific causes of these accidents involved failures in leadership,

decision making and communication (McKeel, 2012).

Aviation Safety Reporting System

There is existing data concerning aviation incidents in the NASA Aviation Safety

Reporting System (ASRS) which is a voluntary safety reporting system for pilots, controllers and

other aviation personnel and crew members. The purpose of the ASRS is to collect, analyze and

respond to these voluntary incident reports to reduce the probability that these incidents will

occur again in the future (NASA, n.d.). A preliminary search of ASRS incident reports between

January 2009 and January 2019 revealed 15,725 reports related to a breakdown in

communication. If the communication breakdown is related to a lack of proficiency in aviation

English, specific words such as English, foreign, language and accent should appear in the

narrative and synopsis of these reports. Narrowing the search to reports that contain these words

reduced the number to 603 reports. A preliminary review of these reports revealed that many

were related to problems with aviation English.

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This study will seek to answer the following question: How does a lack of proficiency in

aviation English lead to communication failures in aviation incidents and accidents? An analysis

of existing data from the ASRS will be performed to determine the answer to this question.

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References

Baugh, B. S., & Stolzer, A. J. (2018). Language-Related Communications Challenges in General

Aviation Operations and Pilot Training. International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics,

and Aerospace, 5(4). https://commons.erau.edu/ijaaa/vol5/iss4/8/

McKeel, G. J. (2012). Crew resource management. Marine Corps Gazette, 96(5), 44-46.

https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/docview/1013985238?pq-

origsite=summon

National Aeronautics and Space Administration Aviation Safety Reporting System (n.d.).

Program Briefing. https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/overview/summary.html