Time for an international standard for English?
In some cases it may even save lives. This is an excerpt regarding the ill fated Helios Airways Flight 522.
"The preliminary investigation reports state that the maintenance performed on the aircraft had left the pressurization control on a 'manual' setting, in which the aircraft would not pressurise automatically on ascending; the pre-takeoff check had not disclosed nor corrected this. As the aircraft passed 10,000 feet (3,000 metres), the cabin altitude alert horn sounded. The horn also sounds if the aircraft is not properly set for take off, e.g. flaps not set, and thus it was assumed to be a false warning. The aircrew found a lack of a common language and inadequate English a hindrance in solving the problem. The aircrew called maintenance to ask how to disable the horn, and were told where to find the circuit-breaker. The pilot left his seat to see to the circuit breaker and both aircrew lost consciousness shortly afterwards.
The leading explanation for the accident is that the cabin pressurisation did not operate and this condition was not recognised by the crew before they became disabled. This model of Boeing 737 has a warning horn which is used both to signal loss of pressurization and incorrect take-off configuration such as incorrect flap or trim setting. The crew may have failed to realise that the warning horn indicated pressurisation failure and became incapacitated while attempting to suppress a warning occurring in what seemed to them an inappropriate phase of flight. Decompression would have been fairly gradual as the aircraft climbed under the control of the flight management system. The pressurisation failure warning on this model should operate when the effective altitude of the cabin air reaches 10,000 ft at which altitude a fit person will have full mental capacity."
"The aircrew found a lack of a common language and inadequate English a hindrance in solving the problem."
Just how would having an international standard compensate for "inadequate English"?
Well, it's no secret that English has a huge vocabulary, with many synonyms, and there also plenty of words with highly varied or even ambiguous usage. If there was a fixed standard then it would help non-native learners as well as perhaps reduce potential for miscommunication.
There already is an international standard used in the aviation industry, as there is in many other areas. That doesn't mean we need to change normal English to cater for pilots. If they want their own standard that's up to them - not me.
It sounds to me like the problem had nothing to do with English. It was caused by the idiotic decision to use the same warning system for entirely different situations. The blame for this one lies on Boeing.
-Well, it's no secret that English has a huge vocabulary, with many synonyms, and there also plenty of words with highly varied or even ambiguous usage.-
Every language is like this. It's no excuse for dumbing down a language. Even in fields of medicine/biology/law the language used in LATIN and not BASIC LATIN.
There is an international standard. It is called the Queen's English.
Since when? I haven't heard of it.
It seems to me that the real problem might have been the pilot leaving the controls to go find a circuit breaker while the plane was in flight. Sit your ass down, buddy!
>> Every language is like this. It's no excuse for dumbing down a language. Even in fields of medicine/biology/law the language used in LATIN and not BASIC LATIN.
Latin is a very precise language though, which is why the Catholic church still uses it for official documents, because there is no ambiguity in meaning.
Obviously, the fact that it is a "dead" language means that it isn't subject to the same evolutionary forces as living languages.
-Latin is a very precise language though, which is why the Catholic church still uses it for official documents, because there is no ambiguity in meaning.-
There are many synonyms in Latin, in case you didn't know. So, there's ambiguity too.
Beyond the limits of the British Isles, English is the language of extensive regions, now or formerly colonies. In all these countries the presence of numerous new objects and new conditions of life has led to the supplementing of the vocabulary by the adoption of words from native languages, and special adaptation and extension of the sense of English words. The use of a common literature, however, prevents the overgrowth of these local peculiarities, and also makes them more or less familiar to Englishmen at home. It is only in the older states of the American Union that anything like a local dialect has been produced; and even there many of the so-called Americanisms are quite as much archaic English forms which have been lost or have become dialectal in England as developments of the American soil.
The steps by which English, from being the language of a few thousand invaders along the eastern and southern seaboard of Britain, has been diffused by conquest and colonization over its present area form a subject too large for the limits of this article. It need only be remarked that within the confines of Britain itself the process is not yet complete. Representatives of earlier languages survive in Wales and the Scottish Highlands, though in neither case can the substitution of English be very remote. In Ireland, where English was introduced by conquest much later, Irish is still spoken in patches all over the country; though English is understood, and probably spoken after a fashion, almost everywhere. At opposite extremities of Britain, the Cornish of Cornwall and the Norse dialects of Orkney and Shetland died out very gradually in the course of the 18th century. The Manx, or Celtic of Man, is even now in the last stage of dissolution; and in the Channel Isles the Norman patois of Jersey and Guernsey have largely yielded to English.
The relevant FAR that defines what the legal oxygen requirements are:
91.211 Supplemental Oxygen
(a) General. No person may operate a civil aircraft of
U.S. registry —
(1) At cabin pressure altitudes above 12,500 feet (MSL) up to
and including 14,000 feet (MSL) unless the required minimum
flight crew is provided with and uses supplemental oxygen for
that part of the flight at those altitudes that is of more
than 30 minutes duration;
(2) At cabin pressure altitudes above 14,000 feet (MSL) unless
the required minimum flight crew is provided with and uses
supplemental oxygen during the entire flight time at those
altitudes; and
(3) At cabin pressure altitudes above 15,000 feet (MSL) unless
each occupant of the aircraft is provided with supplemental
oxygen.
10,000 feet is well below 12,500 which is the altitude that supplemental oxygen would ever be required. 10,000 feet also happens to be the altitude to with high performance aircraft would level out at when having performed an emergency decent.
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No, you don't understand. The cabin somehow became depressurized, but the cabin crew had different native tongues, the pilot was German and the co-pilot was a Greek therefore they used English to communicate to each other. Unforunately, when the warning sounded they couldn't recognize in time that the cabin was becoming depressurized, before they lost consciousness. It's speculated that inadequate English skills may have contributed to this.
Can you imagine trying to communicate to someone in an emergency situation in a foreign language with another non-native speaker? Even the best learners might find that difficult.