![]() ![]() The controller has enough to juggle – having to take time to ask a pilot for additional information which should have been included in the original transmission could put everyone at risk. When this happens, the controller can be uncertain of which aircraft they are communicating with and what that aircraft’s location is. While you don’t want to commit the sin of tying up the air unnecessarily, it is also a problem if you fail to provide the appropriate information. Leaving out information when transmitting They have no means of receiving direction from control until the verbose pilot clears the air. This is dangerous because it effectively renders that channel useless and creates a communications blackout for other aircraft. Meanwhile, his fellow pilots stack up behind him, unable to communicate until he clears. ![]() You all know the pilot – hopefully it isn’t you – who keys up and launches into a meandering, long-winded transmission to the tower. Plus, controllers in other countries may use different phraseology than you are used to. Thick accents can render the transmissions barely intelligible. Now imagine the potential challenges of communicating with someone for whom English is a second language. Under difficult conditions, understanding an ATC transmission given by a native English speaker can be hard enough. If the transmission is somewhat garbled, are you tempted to assume the controller said what you were expecting to hear? Or perhaps you have assumed the tower heard your last transmission even though you didn’t receive a reply. We have all heard the old warning about what assuming does to “you and me,” but do we heed this warning onboard our aircraft? Many of the communication problems that occur are a result of incorrect assumptions. You may not register a change in information. If you have a long history of receiving the same altitude clearance, landing on the same runway or taxiing to the same gate, your brain automatically fills in what it expects to hear. The human brain is designed to look for patterns and to automate processes wherever possible. Others reported landing on an incorrect runway after mistakenly “hearing” that they were cleared for their usual runway. Pilots reported near misses when ascending to a higher altitude than they were cleared for. We may think we are listening, but NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) database tells a different story. How many times have you taken off from the same runway on the same heading and received the same altitude clearance from control? Would your brain register it if you were cleared for a lower altitude than usual? Here are the 6 most common communication problems: Hearing what you expect to hear Review incident and accident reports, then talk to other pilots and you will start to see trends. ![]() We can come up with a plan to prevent these failures from happening in your cockpit. Let’s dig a little deeper and uncover the source of the communications breakdown. Studies and data from other agencies like NASA agree with the FAA statistics.Ĭlearly there is a serious problem, but to learn how to improve ATC communication, we first must understand what is going wrong. ![]() Ineffective communication and other communication-related factors were named as the underlying causes of the human error. Just how big a safety impact can be caused by a breakdown in communication? In a 2004 advisory circular, the FAA estimated that human error was a contributing factor in 60-80% of incidents and accidents. A communication failure can quickly become catastrophic. Safety and communication are directly related. Still, each time you get into the cockpit and put that headset on, you are doing just that. So, would you trust your life to your communication skills? It may not be something you think about every day. What are the three main things you must be able to do as a pilot? ‘Aviate, navigate and communicate,’ as the saying goes. ![]()
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