Language use

[Jeroen Wenting 835249]

Can controllers please speak English when dealing with pilots who aren't contacting them in Spanish?

 

I've experienced several times now that controllers will respond in Spanish even when contacted in English (where English should be their default language).

While I can understand bits of it, enough to get the general meaning most of the time, I'm certainly not anywhere near fluent in the language (and English is the official language of ATC and VATSIM both).

 

It's a great area to fly in, some of the friendliest service in the skies, but it's rather frustrating to not know what people are saying to you (or to those flying around you).

[Javier Larroulet]

Agreed,

while the local language is OK to be used anywhere in the world (both in RL as in Vatsim), in any event when the pilot or the controller can't (or won't) communicate in the local language, the communication between the two must be conducted in english.

 

Otherwise, it would be a mess (again, both in RL and in Vatsim) and a huge barrier against any pilot flying abroad. (imagine this: on a flight from SCEL to EDDF, a pilot could be *forced* to know Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Portuguese, Franch and German if all local controllers stuck to speaking their local languages. This is obviously impractical). In RL, this would pose a serious problem to airlines as they'd need to have pilots able to communicate in a wide variety of languages. In Vatsim, ot would represent a huge discouragement for pilots to fly almost anywhere outside their home country. This is why english is the default language when the local language is not available to any party. All controllers should be able to provide ATC on their local language AND english, and pilots willing to fly to foreign countries should be able to speak english too.

 

On my personal experience, if this was not a standard, through my 3-year life on Vatsim I would have needed to speak (for both my destinations and overflights):

Spanish

English

Portuguese (both Brazilian and Portuguese)

Italian

German

French

Italian

Dutch

Arabic

Russian

Afrikaans

Japanese

Thai

etc etc etc

 

As I said, this would be greatly impractical (I have no problem with English and Spanish, and can handle myself with portuguese and italian if it's spoken slowly and without big words, but nothing else) thus the array of destinations I've covered would have been greatly reduced.

 

cheers!

[Ben Zwebner 906832]

This happens with Pilots too.. I get alot of pilots at JFK who speak ONLY spanish... I apologize, but I dont speak it and I wish I could help but I cant...

[Daniel Pimentel 823608]

Gentlemen:

 

This is the way we instruct our staff to conduct themselves as per SOP. They should stick to communications in English unless the pilot requests otherwise. If you are noticing violations to this policy in VATCAR. please let us know over e-mail with specifics and we'll get to work on it.

 

Apologies for the inconvenience.

 

Best regards,

[Camilo Bernal 893284]

Daniel,

 

My apoligies if i go a bit off topic here, but is there any info about the VATCAR website? as you know has been down for sometime, Any info appreciated.

[Daniel Pimentel 823608]

Camilo:

 

Basically, we're in the process of getting the training and member databases back online. Once everything is up and stable, we'll go public again with the website.

 

I'll post a topic here when everything is back up.

 

Best regards,